"Release (The Tension)" is a song recorded and released by singer

Patti LaBelle Patricia Louise Holte (born May 24, 1944), known professionally as Patti LaBelle, is an American R&B singer, actress and businesswoman. LaBelle is referred to as the " Godmother of Soul". She began her career in the early 1960s as lead singe ...

as a single on the

Epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film with heroic elements Epic or EPIC may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and medi ...

label in 1980. The title track of LaBelle's fourth solo album, '' Released''. It was written and produced by renowned New Orleans funk musician

Allen Toussaint Allen Richard Toussaint (; January 14, 1938 – November 10, 2015) was an American musician, songwriter, arranger and record producer. He was an influential figure in New Orleans rhythm and blues from the 1950s to the end of the century, descri ...

. LaBelle recorded the song in

mid-range In statistics, the mid-range or mid-extreme is a measure of central tendency of a sample defined as the arithmetic mean of the maximum and minimum values of the data set: :M=\frac. The mid-range is closely related to the range, a measure of ...

as the song produced a

post-disco Post-disco (also called boogie, synth-funk, or electro-funk) is a term to describe an aftermath in popular music history circa 1979–1985, imprecisely beginning with an unprecedented backlash against disco music in the United States, leading to c ...

dance groove. The single failed to hit the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and barely hit the R&B charts where it peaked at number 61 while it peaked at number 48 on the dance singles chart. It had some bigger success internationally reaching the top 20 on the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

charts. As a result of that success, LaBelle promoted the song on Dutch TV in the fall of that year.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

{{Patti LaBelle 1980 singles Patti LaBelle songs Songs written by Allen Toussaint 1980 songs Epic Records singles