Songfacts®:

• Aretha Franklin's album Who's Zoomin' Who? is mostly known for "Freeway Of Love," a breezy dance-pop hit written by Narada Michael Walden and Jeffrey Cohen. But Walden, who produced most of the album and co-wrote many of its tracks, has a soft spot for "Until You Say You Love Me." The synth-pop ballad finds Franklin waiting by the phone for her absentee beau to call and profess his love.
  
  Franklin's return to the recording studio after a two-year hiatus was bittersweet. With Walden's help, she was ready to revive her career but she was still grieving over the death of her father. Meeting her in the studio to record the ballad had an effect on the producer.
  
  "It's so deep to me because it's the first thing I've recorded with her and experiencing her genius," Walden told The Songfacts Podcast in 2024. "Her father had just died after being in a coma for two years. She wouldn't record during that time. The first time back in the studio after a two-year lay off was 'Until You Say You Love Me,' so it was really chilling for me to even be in her presence. When you meet her, you see a fire in her eyes. She's all-knowing, she can play the piano, she can sing, she hears everything, she knows everything, yet she was so tender from her father's death."
• Walden wrote this with his longtime collaborator Preston Glass, who was also a co-writer on the album's title track.
• Walden, who started his career as a drummer in the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the '70s, saw some of his own techniques resurfacing in the cutting-edge music of the '80s from people like Prince. Walden told The Songfacts Podcast how the Purple One inspired him to dig back into his own bag of tricks for his project with Franklin.
  
  "At the time, Prince had a major film, Purple Rain, where he would do 'The Beautiful Ones,'" he said. "He got those kinds of deep sounds doing tricks in the studio with the drums. He would record the drums fast and speed the tape down. Tricks I did back in the '70s, he was doing. So I took my own tricks from him and made this concoction that we had never heard for Aretha before. These bubbling sounds that were hot for the day up under her classic sound - that combination really thrilled me, and to hear her sing that song just knocked me out."
• Walden was so wrapped up in producing Franklin's album, he initially turned down the opportunity to work with a talented up-and-comer: Whitney Houston. Gerry Griffith, the A&R representative who got Houston signed to Arista Records, insisted that he reconsider. Once Walden heard the demo for "How Will I Know," slated for Houston's self-titled debut album, he changed his mind.
• This was used in the 1986 movie Nothing In Common, starring Tom Hanks. It was also used on the TV series The Bisexual (episode #1.5 - 2018).
• This was covered by Jamaican reggae singer Susan Cadogan in 1992.