Labour of Love the fourth studio album by British reggae band UB40, was certified platinum by the RIAA 34 years ago today. It was their first album of cover versions released in the UK on 27 September 1983. The album spawns the hit “Red Red Wine”, which became worldwide number-one single, but it also includes three further UK top 20 hits, “Please Don’t Make Me Cry”, “Many Rivers to Cross” and “Cherry Oh Baby”.
The album’s cover art was created by Ken Ansell of the Design Clinic and featured two collages of images that illustrated each of the songs on the album (the five songs on side one were illustrated on the front cover, and the five songs on side two on the back cover). Ansell recounted to Classic Pop magazine in 2017, “We pitched the idea to Virgin of creating an illustration for each song so that as and when they were released as singles we would have ready-made images. Fortunately, on their return the band liked the concept and we went ahead.”
The album reached number one in the UK, New Zealand and the Netherlands and the top five in Canada, but only reached number 39 in the US on its original release. It eventually before re-entered the Billboard 200 in 1988 and peaked at number 14 as a result of smash hit “Red Red Wine”‘s delayed success in the US.
It charted no. 1 in the Netherlands, New Zealand and The Dutch Albums Chart.
The album is 2x Platinum in the U.K. for selling more that 600,000 units, Platinum in New Zealand(15,000), Platinum in Netherlands (100,000), Gold in Germany (250,000), and Platinum in Canada (100,000).
UB40 have since released three further albums of cover versions under the Labour of Love title. Labour Of Love 2 is also certified Platinum by the RIAA.
The original titled was ranked number 98 by Rolling Stone magazine list of the “100 Greatest Albums of the Eighties” in 1989.
Their impact on the cover version of Red Red Wine influenced the original writer and Ali Campbell told Billboard the story of how shocked he was to find out who write the song.
“Nobody was as shocked as we were to find out that Neil Diamond wrote ‘Red Red Wine’… To me, it was always a Tony Tribe song. He sang it,” he said.
The album and 12″ version of “Red Red Wine” included a toasted verse by Astro, later copied and included by Diamond in his live set.
The band said they had always wanted to make reggae for a wide audience. Robin Campbell said, “We actually set out in the first place to popularize reggae. That was our intention.” His brother Ali added, “What we want to do is play heavy dub reggae. But if we came straight out doing that, it would never have gotten on the radio. We commercialize our music all the time; it’s been a series of compromises.”
The album was accompanied by a 30-minute black and white film, of the same titled directed by Bernard Rose and written by Rose and the group’s saxophone player Brian Travers. Rose would go on to direct music videos for Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bronski Beat before becoming a Hollywood movie director.
