"If You Ever Leave Me" is a vocal duet between American singers

Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...

and

Vince Gill Vincent Grant Gill (born April 12, 1957) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He played in a number of local bluegrass music, bluegrass bands in the 1970s, and from 1978 to 1982, he achieved his first mainstream attention after ta ...

. The song was written by

Richard Marx Richard Noel Marx (born September 16, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Marx's first number one success as a songwriter came in 1984 with " What About Me?", which was recorded by Kenny Rogers ...

, and produced by Marx and

David Foster David Walter Foster (born November 1, 1949) is a Canadian record producer, composer, arranger, and musician. He has won 16 Grammy Awards from 47 nominations. His career began as a keyboardist for the pop group Skylark in the early 1970s befor ...

. It first appeared as a song on Streisand's twenty-eighth studio album, '' A Love Like Ours'' (1999), and was released as an international

CD single A CD single is a single (music), music single in the form of a compact disc (CD). Originally the ''CD single'' standard (as defined in the Rainbow Books, Red Book) was an 8 cm (3-inch) "mini CD" (''CD3''); later on the term referred to any si ...

that included three additional tracks, two of which were recorded during the ''A Love Like Ours'' sessions but were not included on the album. The song later was included on Streisand's '' Duets'' album, released in 2002.

Critical reception

The song was well received among music critics. J.D. Considine from ''

The Baltimore Sun ''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news. Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publi ...

'' described it as "pop-oriented fare", that "offers an impressive emotional depth." Chuck Taylor from ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

'' declared it as a "luscious

power ballad A sentimental ballad is an emotional style of music that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships, and to a lesser extent, loneliness, death, war, drug abuse, politics and religion, usually in a poignant but solemn manner. Balla ...

", noting that "it's hard to imagine a better combination of mature voices than that on this tantalizing song about needing to spend every minute with the one you love". He also felt that "thanks to silken production from

Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

and

, this one ranks up there with classics like ' Comin' In And Out Of Your Life' and '

Woman In Love "Woman in Love" is a song performed by Barbra Streisand and taken from her 1980 album '' Guilty''. The song was written by Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, who received the 1980 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. ...

'". An editor from ''

Drogheda Independent The ''Drogheda Independent'' is a newspaper that serves the Drogheda area, including Drogheda, Mid-Louth and East Meath. The newspaper covers stories from local and regional news, advertisements and its own database of records. It is Drogheda ...

'' commented, "The it Vince Gill meets the technical precision of Barbra Streisand. Magic. Two singers from very different genres come together for the duet of the year." The editor concluded, that "this is a beautiful love song that gets better the more you play it." ''

People Magazine ''People'' is an American weekly magazine that specializes in celebrity news and human-interest stories. It is published by Dotdash Meredith, a subsidiary of IAC (company), IAC. With a readership of 46.6 million adults in 2009, ''Peopl ...

'' stated in their review of '' A Love Like Ours'', that songs like "If You Ever Leave Me" "stand out simply because they don't drip with sentimentality and because Streisand allows a bit of

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

to creep into her vocals."

Chart performance

"If You Ever Leave Me" was released to country radio and peaked at number 62 on the US ''Billboard''

Hot Country Singles & Tracks Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine in the United States. This 50-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly by collecting airplay data along with digital sales and streaming. ...

chart. On December 5, 1999, its accompanying

music video A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...

became the third most played video on CMT. It also peaked at number 26 in the UK and number 92 in Australia.

Production

Source: * Producers and arrangers:

and

* Orchestra arranger and conductor:

William Ross (composer) William Ross (born July 20, 1948) is an American composer, orchestrator, arranger, conductor and music director. Ross is the recipient of three Primetime Emmy Awards (in 2007 and 2009), one Daytime Emmy Award (in 1991), and has been nominated for ...

* Engineer: Felipe Elgueta and

Humberto Gatica Humberto Gatica is a Chilean and American recording engineer, mixing engineer and record producer, best known for his work with Celine Dion, Chicago, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, Cher and Michael Bublé. Gatic ...

* Mixer:

Mick Guzauski Nathan "Mick" Guzauski is an American multi-platinum mixing engineer and sound engineer. He has nine Grammy Awards and eleven nominations. His work spans a wide range of styles, including jazz, R&B, Latin, rock, pop, easy listening, funk and ...

* Mastering:

Vlado Meller Vlado Meller (born in 1947 in Humenné as ''Vladimír Meller'') is a Slovak audio mastering engineer, currently with Vlado Meller Mastering in Charleston, South Carolina. Meller works across many genres of music, with credits on rock, hip-hop, p ...

Sony Music Studios Sony Music Studios was an American music recording and mastering facility in New York City. The five-story building was a music and broadcasting complex located at 460 W. 54th Street, at 10th Avenue, in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhat ...

, Santa Monica, CA * Executive Producers:

and Jay Landers

Track listing

Source:

Charts

References

{{authority control Barbra Streisand songs Vince Gill songs 1999 songs 1990s ballads