45. Dusty Springfield - A Girl Called Dusty (1964)

1. Mama Said
2. You Don't Own Me
3. Do Re Mi
4. When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes
5. My Colouring Book
6. Mockingbird
7. Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa
8. Nothing
9. Anyone Who Had A Heart
10. Will You Love Me Tomorrow
11. Wishin' And Hopin'
12. Don't You Know

Bisexual white Britons make the best soul singers. Just sayin'.

Anyhow, the Soul Train continues on its merry little way, with probably the best-produced soul studio album so far. Dusty Springfield apparently had a great ear for choosing material, because these are all great songs (Except for 'My Coloring Book' because it still has the stench of Barbara Streisand on it). She's a fantastic singer too, coloring each song with Pep and Zazz. No wonder the Pet Shop Boys like her.

Although Dusty (and all the musicians, I assume) are British, you certainly couldn't tell just listening to the album. They're trying their hardest to sound as American as possible. While you'd think this would enrage the Anglophile in me, but when I'm listening to soul I sure as hell don't want it to sound British, let's face it. In fact, it's fairly impressive how they get the sound down.

This is probably the closest we'll get to an early-period Motown album, which is a shame, but I'll take this! The big production ballads here-'Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa' and 'Anyone Who Had A Heart'- are stellar and will surely take their place in the hall of Songs That Sound Like Phil Spector Produced Them. Big swooping arrangements, thundering timpanis, Dusty belting out the choruses with wild abandon...what's not to like? Also, 'You Don't Own Me', a Lesley Gore (of 'It's My Party' fame) song of all things, is a really neat song because it's about as close to feminism as pop music could get in this time, when demanding sandwiches wasn't just a shitty ironic "joke". Empowering as HELL.

Dusty Springfield's apparent perfectionism in the studio means that the evil Spectre of Filler does not haunt this album quite as badly, for which I am tremendously pleased. This is an album for all of you who still mourn the passing of the beehive hairdo, or those who like Amy Winehouse except without the tragic downward spiral (not in THIS decade, at least!). 8/10