I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love – PETULA CLARK***

Strangers In The Night/A Groovy Kind Of Love/Rain/Wasn’t It You/There Goes My Love There Goes My Life/Monday Monday/Bang Bang/Homeward Bound/Two Rivers/Come Rain Or Come Shine/Elusive Butterfly/I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love

Petula Clark had enjoyed over a decade of singles chart success before she achieved her UK album breakthrough with I Couldn't Live Without Your Love. The title track was a No. 6 UK hit single. Her career was reinvigorated in the mid sixties when she teamed up with songwriter and producer Tony Hatch. (UK:11)

"Essential for any true Petula fan. For the less committed, it depends which songs you are looking for, but there's no filler here. If you enjoy Petula's music, you cannot go wrong with this."

"I Couldn't Live is mostly covers, as her main songwriter, Tony Hatch, didn't have time to write much new material, aside from the upbeat title track and Pet's self-penned Two Rivers. She does a very interesting cover of Frank Sinatra's Strangers In The Night, a sort of revenge for his infamous cover of Downtown."

"I Couldn't Live Without Your Love, contains mostly covers. The songs are largely upbeat, but there is plenty of variation in pace. Of the other original songs, my favourite is Two Rivers, an autobiographical song about London and Paris, Petula's two cities with rivers running through them."

"Petula's cover of Elusive Butterfly blew me away when I first heard it, and it was one of the factors which made me realise that Petula was a far better singer than I had hitherto acknowledged."

"I Couldn't Live Without Your Love begins with the title track, a top ten hit and another Tony Hatch number (he clearly knew how to write for Clark's voice and vocal stylings). However, this album also has one of the best songs Clark wrote on her own with Two Rivers, which is noticeably different from the rest of the songs. The recognizable covers are a mixed bag, which on this is most of the songs."

"The title song is great. There Goes My Love, Elusive Butterfly and Two Rivers are also must-haves, but the rest are filler."