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Songfacts:  You can leave comments about the song at the bottom of the page.

This song is about a relationship that has gone bad. The singer struggles to understand how something that felt so right could suddenly be so wrong, and wonders if their love is lost forever.

This was written by David Foster, Jay Graydon and Bill Champlin. Graydon tells the story: "David Foster produced an album for Jaye P. Morgan in 1976. It's a great record. It's available in Japan, and never did anything here, really. Then he was at Motown playing some songs with Jaye to try to get a deal over there. He was in the middle of playing a song and he forgot the chorus, and he ad-libbed the chorus to 'After The Love Has Gone.' He comes over to my house, and we went into my little dinky studio. He sits down at the piano, and he says, 'Listen to this chorus.' He plays it, and I said, 'Hey, here's an idea for a verse.' And I went, 'da da dom, A major 7, da-D-minor-6, da da A major 7, bom ba da da da F-sharp minor.' And he just immediately continued on with that, and we had the whole song written in about half an hour/45 minutes. We called Champlin: 'Bill, get over here, we need a lyric.' David was producing Champlin at the time. David recorded it with Champlin, maybe three different versions. He got one that he really liked, though. But then David was also writing with Maurice White for Earth, Wind & Fire for the I Am album. He played the song for Maurice, and Maurice loved it. David called me and says, 'Hey, man, Earth, Wind & Fire wants to record it, but I don't want to tell Champlin that it's gonna have to get pulled off his record. Will you do it?' I said, 'I sure will.' (laughs) I called Bill and I said, 'Bill, here's the story.' And he says, 'I'm not an idiot, man.' (laughing) I said, 'I'm glad you say you're not an idiot. Because they say this thing's gonna be a single for sure. And this could be big.' Needless to say, that song still generates good money. It's unbelievable."

It won 1979 Grammy Awards for Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance by a Group plus Best Rhythm & Blues Song. For David Foster this was to be the first of at the time of writing 14 Grammys. In 1993, he was named Billboard's Top Singles Producer and Top R&B Producer, while receiving the largest number of Grammy nominations, and winning Producer of the Year for Whitney Houston's soundtrack to The Bodyguard. He also wrote the #1 single "St. Elmo's Fire" recorded by John Parr.

In 1982 Bill Champlin (who the previous year had joined the band Chicago as their vocalist), Jay Graydon and Steve Lukather co-wrote "Turn Your Love Around" for George Benson for which they also won a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues Song.

Earth Wind & Fire has the honor of having 3 songs listed among the most performed songs in the BMI catalogue of more than 3 million recorded works. This is their most performed song with over 2 million performances. That is the equivalent of around 100,000 broadcast hours, or more than 11 years of continuous airplay. "September" and "That's The Way Of The World" have also had over 1 million United States radio and television performances. (thanks, Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for above 4)

This is the only song on the album that Maurice White didn't have a part in writing. According to Graydon, they had to give him part of the publishing, "because we were young and stupid." (read more from Jay in his Songfacts Interview)

Comments:

Bill Champlin recorded this a few times. With co-writer Jay Graydon on Airplay and Airplay For the Planet, on two of his solo albums and with Chicago as a bonus track on Chicago's "Love Songs". He also wrote "Friends in Love" with Graydon and Foster for Dionne Warwick and Johnny Mathis and sang the theme for the TV show In the Heat of the Night among others.
- Sara, Silver Spring, MD

Ironically, this is one of EWF's most known songs; the rest of their catolog of hits and albums were about nothing but peace, love, harmony and pride in oneself. Just shows where we are that their saddest song is the most liked by pop audiences.
- Sam, New Orleans, LA

David Foster later did an instrumental version on his 1991 album Rechordings with Kenny G on sax.
- Sara, Silver Spring, MD

The song is covered by Graydon, Foster and Tommy Funderbank on the album Airplay (a popular West Coast/ Adult Oriented Rock record) Bill Champlin later of Chicago did a demo and had wanted to record it first.
- Sara, Silver Spring, MD

Anyone who has experienced a marriage or relationship that is failing after years of success can appreciate this song.
- Mike, santa barbara, CA

i was mad about this song when i was in college. the music.. even the lyrics (i appreciate heartache). i still like it now, but "Reasons" outweighs it much more.
- joycemorrison, PH

Jay Graydon also played the guitar solo on Peg.
- John, Wilmington, NC

Awesome Song...the sound is good feeling even if the lyrics aren't
- Mike, Hueytown , AL