A portrait of grief drawn in the simplest possible lines. The Temptations recorded it as a Smokey Robinson-penned classic, with David Ruffin delivering a lead vocal that ranks among the greatest performances in the Motown catalog. he has lost the woman he loves, not about why she left or where she went. It is about the empty space she occupied, the way a absence can be more present than a person. Since I lost my baby... nothing has felt the same. a catalogue of small details that add up to a life that no longer works.

That same empty space gets a Luther Vandross interpretation on his 1985 album *The Night I Fell in Love*. Where the Temptations' original is all raw, immediate emotion ... Ruffin's voice cracking with the effort of holding back tears, the arrangement spare and focused ... Luther approaches the song with the polished precision that defined his career. The tempo is slower, the production glossier, the backing vocals more intricate. Luther's voice does not crack. It controls the grief, shapes it, presents it as something that has been processed rather than felt in real time. Where Ruffin was drowning, Luther is describing what it felt like to drown. Both versions are devastating. But they devastate in different time signatures.