Luther Vandross

It came out under the name Change, but the lead voice was his. Ironically, this song sung for someone else's project stamped his name on the industry and became the bridge to a solo contract.

• Over a long carpet of strings, he opens the first phrase in a low, soft register. Though he sings with breath mixed in and the force let go, every note is distinct.
• It rides on a disco drum that thumps on every beat, yet the tempo is unhurried, so a dance track ends up sounding like a ballad. It captures intact the sleek production style of around 1980, as disco was fading.
• In the chorus, layer upon layer of backing vocals wrap around his voice. It is the moment where the feel for harmony he built as a session singer meets the presence of a lead vocalist within a single song.
• In 2001 Janet Jackson sampled the song on “All for You,” introducing it to a new generation.

The first song made under his own name and by his own hand, from a man who had spent ten years singing behind others. An R&B No. 1 that proved his insistence on producing himself right.

• The moment the song opens, Marcus Miller's bass climbs and falls without rest, pushing the whole track forward. It sounds less like an instrument holding things up from below than like another melody.
• Even on high notes he never tightens his throat, singing as if lightly bouncing off them. He is sparing with ornament, so the words land crisply on the beat.
• In the chorus, the backing vocals trade lines with the lead in close harmony, like call and response. The voice-stacking approach that would run through all his later records is already fully formed.
• It sings breezily of a love that can be given endlessly and never be too much. Among his songs it is a love song of a rare grain, driven by joy alone, without sorrow.

He rebuilt the song of his boyhood idol Dionne Warwick, all but taking it apart. It is the first recording to fully reveal his gift for reinterpretation, for making others' songs his own.

• He stretched the original, just over 3 minutes, to more than 7. For the first few minutes he loosens the beat (rubato), singing as if speaking and bending the song's pace to his own breath.
• From the midpoint on, the rhythm section comes in and the song slowly swells. He holds back the technique of winding a single syllable across many notes (melisma), then pours it out at the climax.
• He takes the original's mood, the loneliness of an empty house someone has left, somewhere closer to pleading than resignation.
• A clip of him singing the song at an awards show in the late 1980s, with the original singer Dionne Warwick looking on, is still widely talked about. It also shows Warwick in the audience wiping away tears.

He linked songs from two entirely different worlds, the Carpenters and Aretha Franklin, through a single feeling: waiting. It is counted as the farthest his medley reinterpretations ever went.

• Unlike Karen Carpenter's understated original, he slows the tempo dramatically and begins over quiet keys, hesitating one phrase at a time.
• The seam where the song passes into “Until You Come Back to Me” is the heart of this recording. At that point the rhythm comes alive and the voice's temperature rises a notch.
• Behind his lead, the backing vocals lay down long harmonies that grow steadily thicker. The improvised ornaments (ad-libs) of the final stretch reveal his gospel roots.
• Both songs portray a heart waiting for someone who has gone, but the first leans toward resignation and the second toward resolve. He joins that shift of feeling in a single voice.

This is the song that finally brought him his first trophy at the Grammys, where he had come away empty-handed for nearly a decade. It was someone else's song, but in his voice it became a staple of American weddings.

• A slow introduction laid over soft synthesizers and electric piano opens the door calmly. It is an arrangement without flashy devices, one that leaves wide room for the voice.
• He begins low in his range, plainly, as if taking a vow, and gives his voice more weight as the chorus approaches. It shows his way of making a song grow larger and larger without ever shouting.
• The song was written by Terry Steele and David Elliott, yet thanks to his silken tone and precise diction it is remembered as one of his signature songs.
• Because it offers a promise of love here and now, in this very place, it has long been sung at weddings.

A duet with Janet Jackson, this is the song in which the king of ballads stepped into the young dance sound of the early 1990s. It was a hit that broadened his range.

• Over Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis's signature bouncing rhythms rides the energy of the style from around 1990 that blended hip-hop rhythms with R&B (new jack swing).
• Janet Jackson's light, breathy voice and his round, full-bodied tone trade lines and form a vivid contrast.
• Midway through, Bell Biv DeVoe and Ralph Tresvant cut in briefly, adding the feel of a party where a crowd has gathered.
• It handles a simple theme—that love matters more than money—without heaviness, in the tone of friends talking to one another.

Forty-five years later, he summoned in song the father he lost at eight. Released after his collapse and awarded the Grammy for song of the year, it is in effect his final farewell.

• Richard Marx's piano quietly opens the song. Without an elaborate arrangement, keys and strings hold up the voice.
• A singer who never stinted on technique all his life strips away nearly all ornament here and sings as though speaking. The manner of someone feeling his way back through childhood memories fits that restraint.
• Even where the song swells, he does not shout. The longing sounds as if it stays inside the voice.
• At the 2004 Grammy ceremony, Celine Dion sang this song to Richard Marx's piano, filling the place he could not take himself.