When Love Takes Over (3:22)

“When Love Takes Over” is a song by French DJ David Guetta, featuring main vocals by American R&B singer Kelly Rowland. Recorded and composed by Guetta, Rowland, Miriam Nervo, Olivia Nervo, and Frédéric Riesterer, and mixed by Veronica Ferraro, for Guetta’s fourth studio album, One Love, the track was released digitally as the album’s lead single in May 2009. The track became a number one smash, topping charts in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Belgium (Wallonia), Switzerland, Slovakia, and Turkey, and on the European Hot 100 Singles. It has charted within the top five of many other European countries, as well as charting in North America becoming Guetta’s second Hot 100 hit, following “Love is Gone”. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category for Best Dance Recording for the 52nd Grammy Awards. The song was also nominated for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical which was ultimately awarded to Guetta, becoming his first Grammy award.

Rowland met Guetta while attending one of his shows in Southern France during the summer of 2008. She later met up with him and asked him to show her one of his tracks and what he showed her was a “pop number built around a lush piano loop and throbbing percussion” which was the early works of “When Love Takes Over”. The beat moved Rowland to tears. “I felt so much emotion from the track; something happened the first time I heard it, and it was just beautiful”, she said.