In 1987, Warwick released Reservations for Two, her eighth album with Arista Records. Though the album produced the top 20 hit single "Love Power," a duet with Jeffrey Osborne, it failed to reprise the success of previous album Friends (1985) and missed the top fifty on the U.S. Billboard 200. Producer Arif Mardin suggested making a jazz-inflected album of Cole Porter renditions with Warwick next. While the pair recorded a first version in that fashion, Arista head Clive Davis found that the result "sounded too much like a cabaret recording" since he was looking for a ballroom-style sound for the album instead. Warwick and Mardin were forced to rerecord the album, resulting in an overall sound which Warwick first considered "very vanilla," though she later expressed her pride in the project, thinking of it as "one of [her] best works." In 1990, Dionne Warwick Sings Cole Porter won her the first Cole Porter Centennial Award, "You're the Top", given in recognition of outstanding achievements for sustaining the Cole Porter Legend.
