— Dave Rimmer
In an episode of Slate's Hit Parade podcast, host Chris Molanphy discussed the 'featuring' credit in pop music, something which has grown increasingly common in recent years. While as fascinating as ever, I was expecting him to go into more detail about other forms of artist credits. 'And'/'&' denotes a certain equality and even provides hope that their collaboration may be more than a one off. 'With' has an imbalance to it, with the headline act having a distinct prominence over the other. 'Featuring', by contrast, gives the guest the upper hand, putting the spotlight on a vocalist — or, in the case of the brilliant "Big Fun" by Inner City featuring Kevin Saunderson — a producer/mixer type who wouldn't normally be getting such credit.
Those are the most common pop collaboration credits but there are others. One of my favourite singles of the early nineties (though it really isn't anymore) was "In Yer Face" by 808 State who had previously enjoyed Top 10 success with "The Only Rhyme That Bites", credited to M.C. Tunes vs. 808 State. While there were elements to enjoy there — Tunes' shifting between lightning-fast raps and audible pauses to gasp for breath, State's lush, spy-thriller backdrop — I hated the contrived nature of the 'vs.' credit. The two parties weren't in competition with each other and even if there was a considerable amount of tension to merit such a combative description it doesn't mean a thing to me. (Happily, 'vs.' never took off to any great extent, its most prominent placing in "It's Like That" in which Run D.M.C. took on Jason Nivens; generally, it has been used to denote a remixer pretentiously taking over the record in question) Though not strictly speaking a credit per se, albums on the legendary jazz label Verve with titles such as Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson and Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster gave off a mythologising vibe that jazz musicians would show up unannounced at a studio and start playing with whomever happened to be there at the same time.
Finally, we come to the billing for the present offering, "Anyone Who Had a Heart" from B.E.F. presents Sandie Shaw. Here sophistication is the name of the game. Good taste brigadiers Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh — formerly of a pre-fame Human League and but by '82 they were heading the British Electric Foundation production team and in charge of Heaven 17 — have used their good graces to coax Ms Shaw back into the spotlight and here she is with a very special performance. The fact that they gave their album the title of Music of Quality and Distinction says all you need to know. 'Presents' is effectively the same as 'featuring' but with added style. It is a credit that you almost never come across in pop music.
"Anyone Who Had a Heart" was originally a hit in the mid-sixties for Dionne Warwick in North America and Cilla Black in the UK and Europe, an Anglo-American divide which was common at the time for Burt Bachrach and Hal David compositions. Shaw would have a Bachrach-David hit of her own with "Always Something There to Remind Me" (also recorded by Warwick) and here she makes up for never having had the chance to take her own crack at AWHAH. The fact that Warwick and Black were both in their early twenties at the time gives their readings a naivety and vulnerability; being by this point in her mid-thirties, Shaw's is tougher and more defiant, even if she toes ever so closely towards power ballad territory. Dave Rimmer expresses surprise that the Ware-Marsh "electrickery" is so sparse (it's hardly detectable at all, not unlike the guitar playing of Shadow ace Hank Marvin which Rimmer can't make out at all — and he'd not alone); perhaps they felt it best to stick with the basics of sixties pop. It shimmers, as all classic Bachrach and David deserves to.
In terms of production and musicianship, all three versions are a wash (as is Dusty Springfield's rendition); but as far as vocals go, it's Shaw by a mile over either Black or Warwick. Those two girls might think they've experienced heartbreak but it's nothing like a spurned woman in her mid-to-late thirties. Of course, Shaw's contemporaries who also tried their hand at "Anyone Who Had a Heart" did so with all the professionalism one would've come to expect but there isn't the lived experience which the once barefooted songstress treats it. Who's to say how much of Hal David's words applied to her but she gives off the impression that he had written it with her in mind all along.
And, yet, Dusty Springfield's version on her 1964 debut album A Girl Called Dusty is probably the best of the lot. Those smoky vocals give it a similar edge that Shaw's reading lends it. Plus, Dusty happened to be the finest singer of her generation: with all due respect to Cilla, Dionne and Sandie, they were all out of her league)
As a potential hit this went absolutely nowhere and the Sandie Shaw revival was still a couple years away. But as cross-generational collaborations go, B.E.F. proved to be ahead of the game. Eighties synth deconstructionists Art of Noise had yet to register and it's easy to imagine Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs using this template as the basis for Saint Etienne a decade later — not to mention all the incessant irony-laced modern pop which produced William Shatner, Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones comebacks in cahoots with the glitterati of studio techno alchemy. A lot to answer for then.
Yet, Marsh and Ware seemed to thrive more in their role as producers of B.E.F. than in their supposed day job in Heaven 17. The pair doubtless had vast record collections and they seemed like the types who had encyclopedic knowledge of pop's history (another parallel between them and the Stanley-Wiggs duo). They also knew their way around a studio. B.E.F. recordings never sold to the extent that singles like "Temptation" and "Come Live with Me" did but there's no question which project has the sturdier discography. "Anyone Who Had a Heart" is but a sample for a labour of love which is well worth investigating.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Bananarama & Fun Boy Three: "Really Saying Something"
They had been billed as 'Fun Boy Three with Bananarama' on "It Ain't What You Do" earlier in the year but the credits were reversed for the follow-up and to the much more democratic 'and', though ver Hits alters it to 'with'. They were right to change it since the 'Narns were already becoming the bigger group while the FB3 had less than a year to go. Apologies for including yet another Bananarama single in the Also Reviewed This Fortnight section but I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to go with anything else (and didn't wish to go with Roxy's masterful "More Than This" yet again). That's what happens when you've got both Dollar (the utterly wretched "Give Me Back My Heart") and Bucks Fizz ("My Camera Never Lies" is a mess and they were trying way too hard to be like ABBA but it's not bad really) to deal with, not to mention virtually everything else here.
(Click here to see my original review)
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