Songfacts®:

• Lisa Stansfield had a big hit in 1989 with the single "All Around The World," where she has a sudden epiphany that the guy she trampled on is the love of her life. "You Can't Deny It" was her next American single; it has a similar sound but a different storyline, with Stansfield declaring her love for a guy who's been playing coy. It's time to stop denying it and admit they're crazy about each other.
• Stansfield wrote and produced the song with Andy Morris and Ian Devaney, her friends from secondary school that became her primary musical collaborators. The three of them formed a band called Blue Zone that got a record deal and released an album in 1988, but in 1989, after working on a song with the group Coldcut called "People Hold On" (Stansfield sang on it; Morris and Devaney did the horns) that was credited to "Coldcut featuring Lisa Stansfield," they decided to capitalize on her name recognition by making her a solo artist, with Morris and Devaney as support. This arrangement worked well for her first two albums; Morris then dropped off, but Devaney, who was also Stansfield's boyfriend, stayed on. They got married in 1998.
• Musically, "You Can't Deny It" borrows from a song called "Big Thing" that Blue Zone released in 1987. You'll hear a synthesized mallet on both tracks.
• Andy Morris and Ian Devaney were big on horn arrangements, and they came up with a flugelhorn line that gives the song a distinctive feel.
• "You Can't Deny It" wasn't released in the UK, where Stansfield is from, but got a big push in America, where like "All Around The World," it went to #1 on the R&B chart, making Stansfield the first white woman to top that chart twice (Teena Marie had a #1 on that tally with "Ooo La La La" in 1988). In 1991 her song "All Woman" became Stansfield's third #1 R&B hit.
• Burglars hit the studio where Stansfield had been working, so she recorded much of this song at the home she shared with Ian Devaney. She says she recorded the vocal in the bathroom.