Songfacts®:

• Janet Jackson asked the fashion photographer Herb Ritts to direct a sensuous video to accompany "Love Will Never Do (Without You)," the seventh single from her Rhythm Nation 1814 album. Ritts shot the video in black and white in the desert, with Janet clad in jeans and a tank top. The shirtless guy in the video is a young Djimon Hounsou, who was then a model but became a reputable actor, starring in films such as Blood Diamond. The dude who gets cozy with Janet is another model: Antonio Sabato Jr., who later landed a role on General Hospital.
  
  The video marked a turning point in her career, showing the previously demure Janet in a whole new light. The video won a MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video and was nominated for Best Choreography and Best Art Direction in 1991.
• Name an album that spawned #1 hits in three different calendar years. That's right, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814.
  
  The first single, "Miss You Much," went to #1 in October 1989 soon after the album was released. A string of hit singles followed, spread out accordingly to make room, including "Escapade" and "Black Cat," which both went to #1 in 1990. Remarkably, the album was still churning out hits into 1991, when that January, "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" claimed the top spot. There were seven Top 5 singles total from the album, making Jackson the first with that many hits derived from one album.
• "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" was written by the team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who also produced the track. They worked on many of Jackson's hits of this era.
• Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis originally planned this song as a duet and considered their Minneapolis compatriot Prince as a possible partner for Janet. When she came into the studio, Jam remembered, they prompted her to "sing it low like some guy would sing it." They loved the results so much, they ditched the duet idea, which would have been a tough sell because Prince didn't do duets.
• The background vocals were recorded first to help warm up Janet's voice, a tactic also used for "Miss You Much," one of the first songs they recorded for the album.
• The song is about a couple that stick together through thick and thin, defying predictions they wouldn't last. It's one of the lighter songs on the Rhythm Nation 1814 album, which has some thought-provoking songs wrapped with spoken interludes as part of its concept: unity through music and dance. The hits from the album were the lighter songs with the exception of "Rhythm Nation," a jam so funky the message sneaks up on you. The heavy songs with a social conscious include "The Knowledge" and "State Of The World."