Most of this album is pure show business, slick and heavy-handed. Patti LaBelle sings the songs (most of them coproduced by Kenny Gamble) with her usual clear-voiced enthusiasm, but there aren't any hooks – just her big voice in some big settings. And then there's "If Only You Knew," a ballad she sings with a tortured beauty. Deservedly, it has become a hit; the saddest song of the year is at the top of the soul-R&B charts. When she wails in the pain of keeping her love a secret, it's as if she's contacted some wellspring of despair. It's hard to believe it's the same voice as the detached one that hollers to the disco beat in some of the LP's other numbers. But LaBelle also connects here on "Love Bankrupt," by Cecil and Linda Womack (Sam Cooke's daughter). "I've got to go downtown and file love bankrupt," LaBelle sings, "...you changed on me." It's a soulful telling of the end of an affair, and it makes the Gamble offerings, with their overdone horns and strings, clink like ice cubes. (RS 418)

DEBBY MILLER