On September 21, 1971 RCA Victor released another single of the king. "It's Only Love" entered Billboard's "Hot 100" on October 9th at number 90, had a run of six weeks and peaked at number 51. The song could also be found on the "Easy Listening Chart". Here it stayed for five weeks and reached number 19. Worldwide the single barely sold 700,000 units, which translates to 112.5 million paid streams. Somehow Elvis didn't seem able to score a hit anymore. However, in 1980 the king landed a top5 hit with "It's Only Love" on the UK Charts when RCA released the song coupled with "Beyond The Reef".

Of course this single is not available on the streaming platforms. While "Heart Of Rome" can be found on "Love Letters From Elvis" (1971), Sony Music Entertainment included "I'm Leavin'" as a bonus track on the digital version of "Elvis Now" (1972). In 2016 the complete Presley catalogue was restored and remastered by Vic Anesini for a boxed set of 60 compact discs called "The Album Collection". Sony Music Entertainment provides the streaming platforms with the same versions of the individual tracks, albeit in 24 bit/90 khz flac. That means, if the platform of your choice supports high resolution audio, you can enjoy the songs in the same quality Sony used to scan and master them. On Spotify, which has a market share of approximately 30% and is the only platform that publishes streaming figures, "It's Only Love" accumulates 3.6 million streams, "The Sound Of Your Cry" didn't pass the million mark. Compared to the interest in the other singles Elvis released in 1971 and especially when considering the physical sales of this release the amount of streams -as low as it might be- is almost astonishing.

The cover was made up with a photo from late 1970, of course the new boxed set "The Other Sides - Worldwide Gold Award Hits Volume 2" was also advertised.

Elvis recorded the song on May 20, 1971 at RCA Studio B in Nashville/Tennessee and selected the 10th attempt for postproduction and release. It's quite strange, because often he screams more than he sings and also fails to hit several notes. Felton Jarvis tried to cover these mistakes with a clever mix and also added harmony voices (May 21st), violins (May 25th), horns and even more strings (June 21st). The first recording of "It's Only Love" was made by B. J. Thomas, the writers are Mark James and Steve Tyrell. Even though Elvis performs the song in a very sloppy manner, I like "It's Only Love" very much. It's another one of my guilty pleasures.

Here the singer leaves his woman in the middle of the night, because he couldn't stand her crying. To me the melody is reminicent of a musical tune, maybe that's what sets it apart from other power ballads of the king. He recorded it on June 4, 1970 at RCA Studio B in Nashville/Tennessee within 10 takes. On June 22nd Felton Jarvis added harmony voices, on June 30th strings and brass. The production was finalized on October 1st. The producer added more backup vocals and shortened the recording of more than a minute. Even though "The Sound Of Your Cry" was just the b-side of "It's Only Love", RCA released the track ten years later on the album "Elvis' Greatest Hits Volume 1"..