Your Secret Love is the tenth studio album by American R&B singer Luther Vandross, released by Epic Records in October 1996. The album's title track won the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and was nominated for Best R&B Song at the 39th Grammy Awards in 1997. The album served as Vandross's final album under Epic Records after being part of the record label for fifteen years.

Critical reception

Greg Kot, writing for Chicago Tribune, noted that with Your Secret Love "Vandross' brilliance as the most artful soul singer of his time has never been more apparent. Your Secret Love is stuffed with ballads [...] Vandross keeps the tunes simmering, however, with a voice that never calls attention to its spectacular range but rather engages in a nuanced dialogue with his veteran musicians, backing vocalists and duet partners." AllMusic editor William Ruhlmann found that the album had "much in common with its predecessors. It is filled with midtempo love ballads in which Vandross emotes over tasteful R&B gospel arrangements, mostly writing his own songs, but also finding room for a couple of pop favorites [...] As steeped as he is in the nomenclature of R&B vocal expressionism, Vandross as usual sounds more self-involved than romantically devoted." J.R.Reynolds from Billboard wrote that Your Secret Love "demonstrates a practiced versatility via trademark style tracks, an obligatory cover tune, a genre-bending song, and guest artists." David Browne from Entertainment Weekly noted that the "latest batch of love songs are mostly serviceable, and the studio-musician sterility of the music makes nearly every track [...] seem interchangeable. Unrequited passion will always be in style, but Vandross needs to seduce some new sounds as desperately as he does the partners in his songs." The Advocate's Barry Walters called Your Secret Love "the singer's most low-key, nearly snoozy album. He felt that "like most Vandross albums, Your Secret Love has its share of borrowed songs personalized by the singer's patented groans, croons, and cries."

Track listing

Personnel

Production

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications