Turn Your Love Around

This was written by Jay Graydon, Bill Champlin and Steve Lukather. Graydon is known for producing Al Jarreau, Champlin was a member of Chicago, and Lukather was in Toto. All three of the writers played on the track, and Champlin later covered it on his solo album Through It All Graydon tells the story: "'Turn Your Love Around' was a gift, and it's the gift that keeps giving. I was in the bathroom when I came up with the melody, and I was sitting down, if you get my drift. Well, I got off the can as fast as I could and got to a cassette machine so I wouldn't forget it. George Benson was coming in town Tuesday, so I had four days to come up with a song for The George Benson Collection. And I was gettin' nothing. And then bang, I just came up with this melody for the chorus when I was in the bathroom. Then (Steve) Lukather came over and I said, 'Luke, I gotta come up with the song in two days. I've got a great chorus here, come up with a verse.' And I jump in the shower, I get out of the shower and I come down and he had the verse. The next day we called Champlin, and I said, 'Bill, get over here. We need a lyric, and we need a bridge. Let's get this thing done.' And that's how 'Turn Your Love Around' came about. We demoed it that night, George came over the next day, the record company got a copy, everybody loved the song, we recorded it, and that was it. But the melody's memorable, like, so simple. You could play it with your nose on a piano. Any melody that you could play with your nose on piano will be memorable. Because you surely don't have any kind of fast technique to play melodies with your nose on piano. (laughing) If you can play it with one finger on your piano, it's gonna be a simple melody, because you can't do crazy things and do things too fast."

The line, "Girl, you've been charging by the hour for your love," led some to believe this song is about a prostitute. In a Songfacts interview with Bill Champlin, who wrote the lyric, he explained: "I was thinking more, you've been making me pay emotionally or intellectually, but some people took 'you've been charging by the hour' as being about a hooker. In my mind it wasn't - it just seemed like a good idea."

Jeff Porcaro and David Paich of Toto also played on this track. Porcaro used a Linn Electronics LM-1 drum machine, which was one of the first uses of the device in a pop song. They tried replacing it with real drums, but it didn't sound right.