Peak
3
Weeks
16
Score
3,315
Chart Year
1972
Scores & Rankings
Chart Performance
Peak Position3
Peak DateAug 5, 1972
Weeks at Peak2
Weeks Charted16
Weeks in Top 4013
Weeks in Top 108
Weeks at #20
Weeks at #10
Scoring
Summary Calc1,598
Weekly Calc1,717
Total Score3,315
Rankings
Year Ranking#22
Decade Ranking#346
Billboard Year#21
Top 5000#3,127
Details
Music Video
Notes
This is one of the most passionate and soulful ever written about cheating. Written by the Stax songwriters Homer Banks, Ray Jackson and Carl Hampton, the song finds a married man with two children enthralled with his mistress. Despite warnings from his friends, he just can't help the way he feels, and is compelled to be with the other woman. Banks, Jackson and Hampton wrote the song in the middle of the night sometime around 1970. The had the Stax girl-group The Emotions record the song, but their uptempo version didn't work and the song sat on the shelf until the R&B singer Luther Ingram found the tape while visiting the studios. He took the tape and worked out a more mournful arrangement with a gospel feel. Then he recorded the song at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama, utilizing a Wurlitzer piano with an Echoplex unit and also a Hammond organ. The song became a #1 R&B hit for Ingram. Millie Jackson used this song as the basis for her landmark album Caught Up, where she sung the first side of the album from the perspective of the mistress and the second side as the wife who was being cheated on. In our 2010 interview with Millie Jackson, she said: "When I write a story like that, I like to balance it out so people on both sides can see what's going on. That's why I did the wife and the girlfriend. And when I do my live performances, the women were always my biggest fans, but now I do both. I talk about the women, and then I go and I talk about the men, which the women expect me to do, but then I'll talk about the men and the women, so it can be balanced out that way. Try to keep it on an even keel." Other big names to cover this song include Isaac Hayes, Barbara Mandrell, Rod Stewart and Cassandra Wilson. Mandrell's version charted at #31 in the US in 1979.
If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right If being right means being without you I'd rather live a wrong doing life Your mama and daddy say it's a shame It's a downright disgrace Well long as I got you by my side I don't care what your people say Your friends tell you it's no future In loving a married man If I can't see you when I want I'll see you when I can If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right Am I wrong to fall so deeply in love with you Knowing I got a wife and two little children Depending on me too? Am I wrong to hunger for the gentleness of your touch Knowing I got somebody else at home Who needs me just as much? And are you wrong to give your love With a married man And am I wrong trying to hold on To the best thing I ever had? If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right Are you wrong to give your love To a married man? And am I wrong trying to hold on To the best thing I ever had? If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right I don't wanna be right If it means being without you I don't wanna be right If it means sleeping at night I don't wanna be right If loving you is wrong I don't wanna be right Oh, no
Chart History (16 weeks)
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jun 3, 1972 | 64 | 62 |
| 2 | Jun 10, 1972 | 48 | 78 |
| 3 | Jun 17, 1972 | 41 | 85 |
| 4 | Jun 24, 1972 | 19 | 107 |
| 5 | Jul 1, 1972 | 14 | 112 |
| 6 | Jul 8, 1972 | 10 | 116 |
| 7 | Jul 15, 1972 | 9 | 117 |
| 8 | Jul 22, 1972 | 5 | 121 |
| 9 | Jul 29, 1972 | 4 | 122 |
| 10 | Aug 5, 1972 | 3 | 123 |
| 11 | Aug 12, 1972 | 3 | 123 |
| 12 | Aug 19, 1972 | 4 | 122 |
| 13 | Aug 26, 1972 | 6 | 120 |
| 14 | Sep 2, 1972 | 13 | 113 |
| 15 | Sep 9, 1972 | 24 | 102 |
| 16 | Sep 16, 1972 | 32 | 94 |