Vanessa Williams - Williams Recorded Love Album In Face Of Divorce

Singer and actress VANESSA WILLIAMS had a tough time making her new album of love songs - because she began recording it just weeks after husband RICK FOX served her with divorce papers.

Williams and Fox were married for five years before the basketball ace filed for divorce last summer (04).

And the ERASER beauty admits that it made work on EVERLASTING LOVE - which features covers of an array of classic 1970s love songs - all the tougher.

She says, "I got served divorce papers in August and then I had to go into the studio in October to sing love songs, so it was like the last thing I wanted to do.

"But luckily a lot of the stuff that I was singing was bittersweet also, ONE LESS BELL TO ANSWER... I got in there and I was like I could barely get through the song.

"The hardest thing was there's a bonus track called TODAY AND EVERYDAY, which was a poem that Rick had written me. I snuck it to ROB MATHES, who is my musical director, and he made a song from Rick's poem and he sang it to us at the altar during the (wedding) ceremony as a surprise.

"So I knew I felt I had to do it, 'cause it was never recorded and it was very special and it's about love. Even in the album notes I say, 'I'm doing this at the dark side of it, 'cause love encompasses the light and the dark.'"