Songfacts®:

• At Songfacts, we have a whole category of songs about unrequited love - it's no wonder the idea of confessing her feelings scares Patti LaBelle. Written by Dexter Wansel, Cynthia Biggs, and Kenneth Gamble, "If Only You Knew" became the singer's first #1 R&B hit as a solo artist. Wansel - who also collaborated with Biggs on the track "Shoot Him On Sight" from LaBelle's previous album, The Spirit's In It - didn't think the mid-tempo ballad was that great but LaBelle disagreed.
  
  "She loved it from the very beginning and saw the potential, that there were a lot of lonely people out there who loved other people and didn't really know how to say it," he recalled in The Billboard Book Of Number One R&B Hits. "She felt like she could say it for them."
• LaBelle found fame as the leader of the progressive soul trio Labelle, who had a big hit with "Lady Marmalade" in 1974. Following their split a couple years later, she worked hard to build a solo career that earned her critical acclaim but she struggled to make the charts. After releasing her first four albums with Epic, LaBelle signed with Philadelphia International Records, pinning her hopes for a hit on the label's founders, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff. The songwriting and production duo was behind many of the hottest soul singles of the '70s, including "If You Don't Know Me By Now," "Love Train," and "Me And Mrs. Jones." Her first album with PIR didn't yield any hits, but she finally scored on I'm In Love Again.
  
  Aside from being her first R&B chart-topper, "If Only You Knew" was her first solo crossover hit, peaking at #46 on the Hot 100.
• Biggs came up with the idea for the song's lovelorn concept after hearing Wansel's melody. When it was almost finished, the songwriters couldn't agree on a couple of the lines, so they went to Gamble for advice. His suggestion settled the dispute, earning him a songwriting credit.
• Wansel and Gamble also produced the tune. After recording the rhythm track, Wansel oversaw the recording of the lead vocals, Gamble handled the backgrounds and strings, and Wansel mixed it.
• Women can get pretty annoyed when a man tells them to smile, but Wansel had a good reason for asking LaBelle to put on a happy face.
  
  "When she used to sing with Labelle, there were a lot of words you couldn't quite understand, even on 'Lady Marmalade.' I said, 'Patti, when you're smiling and singing, it seems that the words come out so clear,'" he explained in The Billboard Book Of #1 R&B Hits. "So I asked her to smile when she sang a couple of takes, which she did and the words came out clear as a bell."
  
  Wansel pieced together the best performances from all six vocal takes for the final product.
• LaBelle recorded I'm In Love Again in the summer of 1982 while on break from the Broadway show Your Arms Too Short To Box With God. Because of her other commitments - including the duet "The Best Is Yet To Come," another Wansel/Biggs collab, with jazz saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. - the album wasn't ready until fall of 1983.
• Singer/actress D'Atra Hicks performed this in the Tyler Perry stage play What's Done In The Dark in 2007. She also recorded it for her album Finally My Time. It's also been covered by Keke Wyatt, Phil Perry, Jasmine V, Ciara, and the R&B vocal trio SWV.
• This was used on Moonlighting in the season 2 opener "Brother, Can You Spare A Blonde?" (1985). It plays while a jealous David (Bruce Willis) watches Maddie (Cybill Shepherd) slow dancing with his brother at a nightclub. Because the song was only licensed for the original broadcast, and later for the DVD release, it was replaced by "You And I" by Mike Lesirge on streaming.
• LaBelle was so excited to learn the single topped the R&B chart, she woke up her houseguest by jumping up and down on the bed screaming, "Get up, get up! I'm number one!"