Darlene Love, at 85, finally gets the spotlight to herself in a new documentary at TIFF

TORONTO (AP) — It’s cosmic justice that Darlene Love , whose career in music so often went uncredited in her youth, still sings so well at age 85.

The new documentary, “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been,” is punctuated by Love's performances of some of her classic songs, including “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and “He’s a Rebel.” The performances feel Love reclaiming songs from an up-and-down past. But they also just sound good. Even in her mid-80s, one of the greatest American vocalists of the 20th century sounds amazing.

“I always took care of my voice,” Love said, speaking in an interview the day before the film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival . “People don’t realize but talking puts more strain on your voice than singing.”

Love sat in a quiet corner of a Toronto hotel with a scarf draped around her neck — one of many tricks she’s picked up over the years to preserve her voice. She quit smoking decades ago and made a habit of not going out after a concert. Her husband, Alton Allison, keeps a glass of wine waiting for her.

Love still performs regularly performs, especially around Christmas, but she takes breaks during concerts to rest her voice, sit down and tell the audience a story.

“And I have a lot of stories to tell,” she said with a laugh.

“Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been,” which premiered Monday at TIFF, isn’t the first documentary to chronicle Love’s life, but it is the first to focus entirely on her. The acclaimed 2013 documentary “20 Feet From Stardom” was about often-unheralded backup singers and heavily featured Love. It won the Oscar for best documentary feature. At the podium, Love belted out a few lines from the gospel hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

“I sing because I’m happy,” Love sang. “I sing because I’m free.”

But Love getting a spotlight entirely of her own in “I Know Where I’ve Been” is meaningful. For so long Love was denied center stage. The film, directed by Barry Avrich and produced by Taraji P. Henson, is a lavish tribute to a music icon.

“There was no bigger talent,” Bruce Springsteen says in the film. “If you want proof of God, just listen to Darlene Love,” says Lou Adler.

The documentary spans all of Love’s life, from the Christian upbringing where secular music was “the devil’s music,” to her fraught recordings with producer Phil Spector, to her comeback in the early 1980s. Spector, who gave Love (born Darlene Wright) her name, recorded some of Love’s most beloved records. But he also undercut her career by, among other things, releasing the song “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” as a single for the Crystals, another act of his.

By the late ’70s, Love had fallen out of show business altogether. For a 10-month stint, she even cleaned houses to support her family.

“I just couldn’t find any work. ‘Christmas’ came on while I was cleaning houses to take care of my family, to get some cash flowing,” she recalls. “I just looked in the mirror and I said, ‘This is not what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be singing.’

Despite all the reasons Love has to be jaded about the music business, she doesn’t speak particularly ill of Spector, who died in prison in 2021, 11 years after being convicted of murdering Lana Clarkson. She never felt victimized. She enjoyed singing backup for years, including with her close friend Dionne Warwick . And she knows those songs she recorded in the ‘60s — a pinnacle of 20th century American culture — endure.

“We long for hearing that kind of music. The kids have different music. Everybody has different music. My parents’ music is different from ours,” says Love. “But there’s something about our music that everyone likes. And you can sing it. A lot of the music today, you can’t sing.”