22 August 1987
I was too young in 1987 to know much about Dusty Springfield. Only years later I learned her mother was from my home town of Tralee, Co. Kerry, so Dusty was basically one of our own. (No, we’re not related.) It was much later too, during my college years, that I became obsessed by Bacharach & David, listening almost daily to a compilation that included Dionne Warwick as their muse, Aretha Franklin with the greatest cover version ever, and Dusty Springfield singing ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’ and ‘The Look Of Love’. In the ’60s Dusty, née Mary O’Brien to an Irish family in London, was an enormous star with her own BBC and ITV shows, and probably the best pop vocalist ever to come from our side of the Atlantic. Even at the height of her fame, she toured Ireland and played in Tralee. After her death in 1999, her family scattered a portion of her ashes off the Cliffs of Moher.
By 1987 the wider world seemed to have forgotten most of the above. Though Dusty was still releasing new music all the while, her stock had declined through the 1970s and she had lived mostly in America, far from her home fan base and the prurient gossip of British tabloids. Neil Tennant thought Dusty a star worth saving and approached her to record ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’, at first with no success. Then, as legend has it, she heard ‘West End Girls’ for the first time on the radio one day while driving, and almost crashed her car as a result. The Pet Shop Boys had game; Dusty was in.
‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’ is mostly another superb Tennant-Lowe composition, with some collaboration; the “Since you went away…” verse was written by Allee Willis, who later found fame and riches as the co-writer of ‘I’ll Be There For You’, the theme from Friends. The two styles work well together: PSB’s enduring fascination with the cold realpolitik of lives in late-’80s London yuppie cocktail bars; Willis’ more traditional melodic romantic concerns; the pop classicism of both.
All this, of course, is a stage set for one of the greatest comebacks in pop history. Dusty Springfield on ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’ is electrifying. She always had an astonishing voice: cabaret smokiness freighted with hurt, pride, defiance and a keening, playful love. To that enthralling mixture, time and travails had added a raspy husk for a touch of world-weary cynicism and battle-hardened experience. She also ‘gets’ the Pet Shop Boys: her wry delivery of response lines like “got to have it!” is pure Tennant. Dusty’s big show-stopping moment, though, is Willis’ “Since you went away…” verse, which she delivers in two different readings, both sensationally good. Then we get a welcome coda of more Dusty; whatever bin fire of a relationship this song depicts, let there be no doubt which party is walking away from it with their head held high. It’s to the eternal credit of Tennant and Lowe that they made this happen. (In the UK charts ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’ got Rick-rolled and peaked at number two. We her own people were clearly more discerning about what we put at number one.)
I have one more related anecdote. Further years later, I was in the last few miles of the Paris Marathon; due to various life unhappinesses at the time I hadn’t trained properly and was now suffering badly. Suddenly, approaching one of the many music stands along the route, I heard a familiar record ringing across the empty parkland of the Bois de Boulogne: Dusty Springfield with another Pet Shop Boys composition for her, a great 1990 single called ‘In Private’. There are people of many different lives and loves who have found more valuable solace from her music, and in more difficult times. But it made me immensely happy – the sound of a fellow Tralee person there when I needed someone.
Dusty Springfield singing Bacharach and David songs is about as perfect as pop music gets, and ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’ belongs in that company. Even taken aside from the context of Dusty’s life story, it’s a thrilling record. As the renaissance of an iconic star, it’s magnificent. Neighbour’s child, don’t you know.
Irish Number Ones 