In 1975, a melancholy ballad by a Brazilian singer-songwriter climbed American radio charts and turned its creator into an international star.
Morris Albert, best known for the soft rock favorite “Feelings,” turned 75 on Sept. 7. The song became Albert’s signature recording, traveled around the world, and was soon interpreted by an extraordinary collection of performers, including Elvis Presley.
Born Maurício Alberto Kaisermann in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1951, Albert began his recording career in his home country before finding a much larger audience with “Feelings.”
“The inspiration, that’s the plain truth, was a woman, a beautiful woman from Rio,” Albert told Revista Istoé in 2004. “Everything I write is something I’ve experienced in life, or seen happen, or wanted to convey. ‘Feelings’ had a muse. I was 19, she was 30, it was a platonic attraction, nothing happened.”
Released internationally during the mid-1970s, the ballad centered on the lingering emotions left after a relationship ends. Albert’s restrained vocal and the song’s sweeping melody proved an ideal fit for the era’s softer pop sound.
The record quickly took off.
“Feelings” climbed to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975 and reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart. It also became a major international success and earned Albert Grammy nominations for Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.
Even amid all of its success, Albert never revealed the identity of the song’s subject.
“This love lingered in my mind for a long time; I couldn’t tell her I loved her, so I wrote it,” Albert said. “I remember it well. I was in a house in São Paulo, preparing the songs for my first LP—it was the vinyl era—I was alone, it was raining heavily outside, I couldn’t sleep. The lyrics came all at once, directly in English.”
The song’s reach extended far beyond Albert’s own recording.
Over the years, “Feelings” was performed or recorded by artists including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, Johnny Mathis, and Sarah Vaughan, helping turn the song into a pop standard.
Presley also brought “Feelings” into his orbit during the final years of his career. He rehearsed the song in 1976 while working at Graceland, although his performance wasn’t commercially released as a conventional studio single during his lifetime. The connection nevertheless placed Albert’s composition among the many contemporary songs explored by Presley in his later recording sessions.
Albert followed his breakthrough with additional releases, including “She’s My Girl” and “Sweet Loving Man,” but nothing approached the enormous international reach of “Feelings.”
Still, “Feelings” has remained inseparable from Albert’s career for more than half a century. At 75, the Brazilian singer-songwriter is forever connected to a ballad that traveled remarkably far, from the international charts to interpretations by some of the biggest voices of the 20th century.
Related: 1974 Classic Ballad, Once Spent 32 Weeks Charting, Became a Soft Rock Anthem
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