"The Game of Love" | |||||||||||
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Single by Santana featuring Michelle Branch | |||||||||||
from the album Shaman and Hotel Paper (international version) | |||||||||||
B-side | "Come to My World", "Curacion" | ||||||||||
Released | September 17, 2002 | ||||||||||
Format | CD, 7" | ||||||||||
Recorded | 2001 | ||||||||||
Genre | |||||||||||
Length | 4:18 | ||||||||||
Label | Arista | ||||||||||
Writer(s) | Gregg Alexander, Rick Nowels | ||||||||||
Producer(s) | Clive Davis, Carlos Santana | ||||||||||
Santana singles chronology | |||||||||||
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"The Game of Love" is a song performed by Santana from the album Shaman by Santana. The vocal performance on the song is by Michelle Branch. It was composed by Gregg Alexander and Rick Nowels. The song was launched as single in 2002, and won a Grammy Award for "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals", as well as peaking at No. 5 in on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
The track had originally been recorded with a male vocalist but producer Clive Davis felt a female voice would maximize the song's appeal and a recording of Santana performing "The Game of Love" with Tina Turner as vocalist was completed. When Turner declined to participate in making a video for the track Davis first recruited Macy Gray to cut a replacement vocal: the version with Gray not being deemed satisfactory Michelle Branch was then invited to be the track's vocalist with Branch's rhythm guitar playing also added to the track. Branch would recall: "It was the first time for me to sing somebody else's song. Usually I'm like: 'Oh I want it this way' and I'm in charge...I didn't meet [Carlos Santana at the recording session], I didn't know what was going on...It felt to me like wow it seems like there's so much at stake, I'm going to go in there and just sing my heart out and just cross my fingers."
The Tina Turner version of "The Game of Love" was issued on the 2007 retrospective Ultimate Santana, Carlos Santana then stating: "There's only one Tina Turner...No one can hit a note like Tina Turner" - "I love Michelle [Branch] and she did a great interpretation of it. It's just that with all honor and respect to Michelle, there's the girl and there's the woman, and Michelle is unfolding into a woman...but it takes time to go from a girl into a woman."