I Love Your Smile

Album: Inner Child (1991)
Charted: 2 2
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Songfacts®:

  • This is a very innocent song where Shanice takes the role of a schoolgirl infatuated with a boy in her class. It's a popular kids' song that did well on Radio Disney, but it also appealed to adults, as it scored on the Pop and R&B charts.
  • Shanice is Shanice Wilson, who was 18 when this song was released. Like Fergie, she was a cast member of the TV show Kids Incorporated, and like Britney Spears, she was a contestant on the show Star Search.
  • Narada Michael Walden produced this track and received a composer credit on the song along with Shanice, Jarvis La Rue Baker and Sylvester Jackson. Walden's production credits include "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" and "So Emotional."
  • Branford Marsalis played the sax solo. You can hear Shanice introduce him by saying, "Blow Branford."
  • Shanice did a rap in this song that was edited out for the Pop radio version. This was common practice in and around 1991, as TLC, Kym Sims and Cece Peniston all had hits with raps inserted in the bridge that could be easily removed for Pop consumption. Rap had yet to go mainstream, and there were many radio stations that would not play any song with a rap in it.
  • The song uses a small portion of Claude Debussy's "Arabesque No. 1," which was composed for the piano by the French composer between the years 1888 and 1891, when he was still in his twenties. The work was also used as the theme music to PBS's show Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer and was appropriated on Alicia Keys track "Like the Sea", from her fourth studio album The Element of Freedom.

Comments: 1

  • Jackie from Baltimore, MdThis is such a fun, light-hearted song...you can't help but smile when it's on! The rap is a little cringe-worthy though. "Sike!"
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