Love Me Tender (Julie Andrews album)

Love Me Tender is a studio album released in 1982 by English singer Julie Andrews. It was produced in Nashville by Larry Butler, earlier that year when she briefly stepped away from filming The Man Who Loved Women in Los Angeles. The album was first released in England by Peach River Records and distributed by PRT, and includes fourteen songs, the American release by Bainbridge Records offered only ten of the cuts, while the Japanese issue features sixteen songs.

The project was initiated by Andrews' husband, filmmaker Blake Edwards, who suggested a country-inspired album when the singer revealed she wanted to record an album unlike her past repertoire, moving beyond show tunes and theatrical songs. Andrews was reportedly insecure about how she would be received as a country singer and chose to keep the recording process relatively quiet. The fact that the album was released by a small independent label particularly pleased the singer, who said: "They've given the album the kind of personal attention that I know it would probably have missed had it been released by a major company".

In June 1983, Andrews has flown to London from her Switzerland home for some low-key promotion of the album, about which she had been saying remarkably little. The promotion includes the release of two singles: "Some Days Are Diamonds", a radio only single, which peaked at number 10 on the Canadian RPM Adult Contemporary chart, and the title track, a duet with Johnny Cash, which came about spontaneously when Cash was recording in a neighboring studio. Andrews expressed interest in releasing it as the first single, but contractual issues with Cash's label, CBS Records, prevented it. The "Love Me Tender" single released in UK (BBPR 5) includes two b-sides, "Love Is A Place Where Two People Fall" and "I Still Miss Someone".

When the singer released her ninth studio album, Love, Julie (1987), she talked about the experience with Love Me Tender: "That one is hidden away somewhere (...) But I had a ball doing it. Working with those Nashville musicians was very good for me, a wonderul experience. We just went into the studio and made music".