Born: 26 July 1941, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Darlene Wright
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Despite—or perhaps because of—her phenomenal talent, singer Darlene Love was held back for years by producer Phil Spector, who relegated her to background singer roles. She left her mark in the sound of hits ranging from “Monster Mash” to “That’s Life.” When he did release songs she’d recorded, he did so under other artists’ names. As summed up by Variety,
Her powerful voice drove one of Spector’s early classic hits, “He’s a Rebel” — although it was credited to one of Spector’s girl groups, the Crystals — and Love was signed to his label Philles Records… While she sang many of his hits — including “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” from his classic 1963 Christmas album — Spector often buried her name, also releasing what was intended as her debut solo single, “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” as a Crystals song, or putting them out under the group name Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans. She was also relegated to backing vocals on many other Spector hits with lead vocals by unquestionably inferior singers.
“The whole thing was like a bad marriage,” she later said. “It’s a marriage that was abusive—not just physically, but mentally. That’s what Phil was trying to do with me. He wanted to control not Darlene, but the talent … If he couldn’t do that, he was going to do everything in his power to keep my talent from shining. He made me. ‘I discovered her.’”
Even once her contract was up and she was able to sign with another company, that company in turn sold her contract back to Spector. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore and quit, turning instead to cleaning houses in the 1970s. As her publicist later recalled, “For years, nobody would touch Darlene Love. I had to beg.” Love cites the credit theft as an issue: “They said, ‘Well, you’re not a Crystal, you’re not a Ronette and nobody knows you did these songs.’” It’s worth noting that when the “famously unstable” Spector died in 2021, he was serving a prison sentence for the 2003 murder of Lana Clarkson.
“It was because of him that I never loved the business as much as I maybe should have,” Love later told The New Yorker.
She was in Beverly Hills cleaning a rich woman’s bathroom when she heard “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, one of her songs, on the radio. She took it as a sign to return to singing, and within a few years, she was performing that very song on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1986, which soon became an annual holiday tradition. She sued Spector in 1993 for unpaid royalties and won, to the tune of $250,000. She picked up acting roles, including playing Danny Glover’s wife in all four Lethal Weapon movies. Her autobiography, My Name is Love, was published in 1998.
In 2011, she was inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. She starred in the 2013 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, about back-up singers, which won a Grammy for Best Music Film and an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. That year, she commented, “My calendar is full! At age seventy-one!” In a full-circle moment, Love reunited with Cher—who had recorded backing vocals on the original recording of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”—in 2023 to sing the song on Cher’s album Christmas and live in concert. She was 82.