Boomerang Week: Toni Braxton - Love Shoulda Brought You Home (1992)

And now we come to arguably the centrepiece of the whole album. L.A. & Babyface wanted a Whitney Houston-style female vocalist to be the figurehead of their then recently-launched LaFace records label and boy, did they get one. Formerly of gospel supergroup The Braxtons, her début album is a stonker, with not only this track, but also classics like Another Sad Love Song and Breathe Again.
Love Shoulda Brought You Home was the first solo single by Braxton. Written by Babyface, Daryl Simmons, and Bo Watson, it served as the follow-up release to Give U My Heart, the duet with Babyface. The two songs were initially submitted to Anita Baker, but due to her impending pregnancy she had to decline. The single became a top forty hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and her second consecutive top five hit on the U.S. Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. One year later, the song was included on her eponymous debut album, Toni Braxton.
The title is an allusion from a line in Boomerang; in the film, Halle Berry's character, Angela Lewis, angrily tells her man, Marcus Graham (Eddie Murphy), after he spent the night with another woman, "Love should've brought your ass home last night." The music video, directed by Ralph Ziman, showed an angry Braxton, fed up with her boyfriend and testifying that if he really cared, then love should have brought him home last night.
As an aside, she found true worldwide success with tracks from her second album Secrets, with You're Makin' Me High and the Diane Warren-penned Un-Break My Heart, a version of which she did at her live concert at Wembley Arena, a concert which I had the distinct privilege of attending. She dedicated her rendition of the Un-Break My Heart to the recently deceased Princess Of Wales, and sang it to imagery of Diana on the giant video screen behind her.
Now I'm no Daily Express reader, but even I had a lump in my throat at that point.