Body And Soul

Album: Rhythm Of Love (1994)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this song, Baker wants to make sure she's not going to get burned before she opens her heart again. It was written by the team of Ellen Shipley and Rick Nowels, who wrote most of Belinda Carlisle's hits. In a Songfacts interview with Shipley, she told the story behind it: "That's probably my favorite song of anything that we've done. I was sitting at my piano in Brooklyn and I just started playing this three-quarter kind of song. I had this idea called 'Body And Soul,' so I was writing to that. Then I flew back to LA to work on it with Rick.

    'Body And Soul' has a classic old-time feel that also works now. This is where people are afraid of commitment if they don't know for sure what the other person feels. It's a really simple song where she wants to know because she's in it, she's deep in it, and she wants to know what he feels, because we don't always know. It was a pick in Billboard."

    "Melodically, lyrically, it's passionate," she added. "It's clear: It's got one thought and it's a lot of what people feel. It's commitment: Am I going to commit to this person? I've got to know how they feel first."
  • When Shipley and Nowels started writing this song, they had Hall & Oates in mind, but realized it was much more suited to Baker. It pitch it, they created a demo using a singer that sounded a lot like Baker; the real Anita took the song as soon as she heard it.

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