Let's Stay Together (3:16)

“Let’s Stay Together” is a song by Al Green on his 1972 album of the same name. The Let’s Stay Together Songfacts reports that according to Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 songs, after producer Willie Mitchell gave Al Green a rough mix of a tune he and drummer Al Jackson had developed, Green wrote the lyrics in 5 minutes. However, Green didn’t want to record the song and for 2 days he argued with Willie Mitchell before finally agreeing to cut it.

It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and remained on the chart for 16 weeks. It also topped Billboard’s R&B chart for nine weeks. The song later appeared on the soundtrack to Pulp Fiction. It was ranked the 60th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

“Let’s Stay Together” was later covered by Tina Turner, her second collaboration with the British Heaven 17/B.E.F. production team after “Ball of Confusion” in 1982, and served as her comeback single in late 1983, charting at #6 in the UK (one place higher than Al Green’s original - and her third U.K. Top 10 single, the first being “River Deep, Mountain High” and second being “Nutbush City Limits”, (both with former husband Ike Turner) and also #26 on The Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the U.S. Dance Chart. The song became a turning point in Turner’s solo career and was later included on her multiplatinum selling album Private Dancer, released in the Spring of 1984.