"If You Asked Me To" is a song written by American songwriter Diane Warren and produced by Stewart Levine and Aaron Zigman. It was originally recorded by American singer Patti LaBelle for her ninth studio album, Be Yourself (1989), and also for the soundtrack to the James Bond film Licence to Kill. The song was released as the soundtrack's second single on June 12, 1989 by MCA Records. The lyrics are from the point of view of a woman who pleads to her significant other: "If you asked me to, I just might change my mind, and let you in my life forever". Three years later, Canadian singer Celine Dion covered the song for her 1992 self-titled second English-language studio album. Released as the album's second single, Dion's version topped the Canadian charts and peaked at number four on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Pan-European magazine Music & Media described the song as "a smooth, mid-tempo ballad with a synthesizer-dominated AC production by Stewart Levine".[2]
The music video for "If You Asked Me To" was filmed the day after the funeral of LaBelle's sister Jacqueline "Jackie" Padgett who died of lung cancer at age 43. (She was the third of LaBelle's sisters to die; all three of Patti's sisters died before age 44.) As such, the context of the song changed dramatically, as a mourning LaBelle, dressed in black, sings the song in a church (with candles and mourning lilies), intercut with shots of her in tears.
Despite being a Top 10 hit on the US BillboardHot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts,[3] the song did not crossover to the pop charts until Celine Dion covered it three years later. Regarding the subject, LaBelle once explained during an interview used for the liner notes of her 1999 Greatest Hits album what she believed to be the reason for this fact: "I knew the song was a hit when I recorded it, and I was happy that Celine did it and did so well with it. But the arrangements are so close and we both have pretty powerful voices...so who knows why my version didn't take off. Maybe it was timing..".[4]
Celine Dion's cover version of "If You Asked Me To" was released as the second single from her 1992 self-titledstudio album. It was produced by Guy Roche and released in Canada and the United States in April 1992 and later the same year in the rest of the world.[8] The single includes a non-album B-side, "Love You Blind", written by Sheryl Crow and Jay Oliver, and produced by Walter Afanasieff. Later, "If You Asked Me To" was included on the North American versions of Dion's greatest hits albums, All the Way… A Decade of Song (1999) and My Love: Essential Collection (2008).
Critical reception
AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine named "If You Asked Me To" a standout song of the album, along with "Beauty and the Beast" and "Love Can Move Mountains".[9] An editor from Billboard called it a "lush" and "dramatic" ballad.[10] Another editor, Larry Flick, wrote that Dion reinterprets Patti LaBelle's hit "with highly positive results". He stated that "she proves she is on the road to developing a fine and distinctive vocal style".[11] Clark and DeVaney from Cashbox noted, "Now that the world knows who this Canadian songstress is", viewing the song as "powerful and emotional".[12]Dayton Daily News said it is "hauntingly beautiful".[13] Dave Sholin from the Gavin Report felt that Dion "deserves all the accolades she's gotten the past few years, and surely her rendition of this touching Diane Warren ballad [...] takes her to a new level".[14] Another editors, Rufer and Fell, stated that the singer "makes it fresh and uniquely her own".[15] Geoff Edgers from Salon Magazine wrote that "If You Asked Me To", "with Dion's moaning, pleading, screaming take-me vocals, works when reassessed as a chunk of modern soul as worthy as anything recorded by Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey".[16] Jonathan Bernstein from Spin declared the song as "sensational", adding that it "proves that astringency, urgency, and dressing down may win out over homogeneity, artifice, and insincerity, but a good Diane Warren hook lives forever."[17]
Commercial performance
The single was a hit in the United States and Canada. "If You Asked Me To" reached number four on the US Billboard Hot 100, and did even better on the BillboardAdult Contemporary chart, spending three weeks at number one. Also in Canada, it reached number one. The single had moderate success elsewhere. "If You Asked Me To" was released twice in the United Kingdom: first, in June 1992, when it peaked at number 60, and the second time in December 1992, when it reached number 57.
In the video, Dion performs the song in a manor. In the beginning she is sitting alone in a room, by a large window. A scene shows a hand stroking her cheek. In other scenes she is dressed in a white dress and surrounded by mirrors. Some outdoor scenes also shows Dion, as she walks outside the house. When the video ends, a man holds her around where she sits in her room.
