I Keep Coming Back

Album: Gentlemen (1993)
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Songfacts®:

  • Soul singer Tyrone Davis originally recorded "I Keep Coming Back" in 1970. Afghan Whigs lead singer Greg Dulli listened to the slow ballad almost every night before he went to bed in the early '90s. "It became like a ritual for me," he told Uncut magazine. "I became really fixated on that song and the simple message that it was from one person to another."
  • Dulli introduced "I Keep Coming Back" to his bandmates at the last-minute during recording sessions for Gentleman. The album's raw and confessional lyrics explore the darker aspects of love and intimacy, including jealousy, possessiveness, and infidelity. He felt the song could be the counterpoint to the violence that came before it. "It was sweet, it was honest, it was vulnerable," he told Spin magazine. "It put everything that came before it into a focus of finality."
  • After Dulli introduced "I Keep Coming Back" to the group, they all swapped instruments, so everybody is playing a different instrument on the track. "It seemed like a good way to end it," he told Uncut, "and then we turned it into a strange instrumental at the end, which gave it the cinematic closing."
  • Tyrone Davis was a former Freddie King valet who was discovered working in Chicago nightclubs by pianist Harold Burrage. His first hit single was "Can I Change My Mind" in 1968, which reached #1 hit on the Billboard R&B chart and #5 on the Hot 100.

    Davis continued to have success with hits like "Turn Back the Hands of Time," "Turning Point," and "Without You in My Life." He was known for his smooth, soulful voice and his ability to convey emotion in his music.

    Davis recorded "I Keep Coming Back" as the flip side to "Turn Back the Hands of Time."
  • Leo Graham and Leo Austell wrote "I Keep Coming Back." Chicago-based producer/songwriter Leo Graham co-wrote and produced many of Tyrone Davis' songs. He also penned hit tunes for The Manhattans and Champaign.

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