Dusty Springfield - "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me"
In honor of PRIDE month this June I will spotlight only LGBTQIA+ Artists to show you one more way in which we should be grateful for to the Queer Community and how without it we would not have the world or nation that we love so much. We should be grateful and proud.
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien OBE (16 April 1939 – 2 March 1999), professionally known as Dusty Springfield, was an English pop singer and record producer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s. With her distinctive mezzo-soprano sound, she was an important singer of blue-eyed soul and at her peak was one of the most successful British female performers, with six top 20 singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 and sixteen on the UK Singles Chart from 1963 to 1989. She is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and UK Music Hall of Fame. International polls have named Springfield among the best female rock artists of all time. Her image, supported by a peroxide blonde bouffant hairstyle, evening gowns, and heavy make-up, as well as her flamboyant performances, made her an icon of the Swinging Sixties.
Born in West Hampstead in London to a family that enjoyed music, Springfield learned to sing at home. In 1958 she joined her first professional group, The Lana Sisters, and two years later formed a pop-folk vocal trio, The Springfields, with her brother Tom Springfield, and Tim Feild. They became the UK's top selling act. Her solo career began in 1963 with the upbeat pop hit "I Only Want to Be with You". Among the hits that followed were "Wishin' and Hopin' " (1964), "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" (1964), "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (1966), and "Son of a Preacher Man" (1968).
Springfield brought many little-known soul singers to the attention of a wider UK record-buying audience by hosting the first national TV performance of many top-selling Motown artists beginning in 1965. Partly owing to these efforts, a year later she became the best-selling female singer in the world and topped a number of popularity polls, including Melody Maker's Best International Vocalist. Although she was never considered a Northern Soul artist in her own right, her efforts contributed a great deal to the formation of the genre as a result She was the first UK singer to top the New Musical Express readers' poll for Female Singer.
To boost her credibility as a soul artist, Springfield went to Memphis, Tennessee, to record Dusty in Memphis, an album of pop and soul music with the Atlantic Records main production team. Released in 1969, it has been ranked among the greatest albums of all time by the US magazine Rolling Stone and in polls by VH1 artists, New Musical Express readers, and Channel 4 viewers. The album was also awarded a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame and in March 2020 the US Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry, which preserves audio recordings considered to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Despite its current recognition, the album did not sell well and after relocating to America following its release, she experienced a career slump which lasted several years. However, in collaboration with Pet Shop Boys, she returned to the Top 10 of the UK and US charts in 1987 with "What Have I Done to Deserve This?". Two years later, she had two other UK hits on her own with "Nothing Has Been Proved" and "In Private". Since her death, Springfield has been widely commended as the leading British soul singer of the twentieth century.
Springfield was one of the best-selling UK singers of the 1960s. She was voted the Top Female Singer (UK) by the readers of the New Musical Express in 1964 to 1966 and Top Female Singer in 1965 to 1967 and 1969. Of the female singers of the British Invasion, Springfield made one of the biggest impressions on the US market, scoring 18 singles in the Billboard Hot 100 from 1964 to 1970 including six in the top 20. The music press considers her an iconic figure of the Swinging Sixties. Quentin Tarantino caused a revival of interest in her music in 1994 by including "Son of a Preacher Man" on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, which sold over three million copies. In that same year, in the documentary, Dusty Springfield: Full Circle, guests of her 1965 Sound of Motown show credited Springfield's efforts with popularising US soul music in the UK.
In 2008, country/blues singer-songwriter Shelby Lynne recorded a tribute album featuring ten of Springfield's songs as well as one original. The album, titled Just a Little Lovin', featured two tracks selected from Springfield's debut, four from Dusty in Memphis, and four from throughout her back catalogue. Lynne's album received critical acclaim, charted at number 41 on the US Billboard Charts and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical).
The beginning of 2017 brought another revival of interest in Springfield's music by the inclusion of the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" in Andy Wilman's The Grand Tour, featuring Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond. The cut version can be heard in the fifth episode of the show.
Springfield was popular in Europe and performed at the Sanremo Music Festival. Recordings were released in French, German, and Italian: her French works include a 1964 four-track extended play with "Demain tu peux changer" (aka "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"), "Je ne peux pas t'en vouloir" ("Losing You"), "L'été est fini" ("Summer is Over") and "Reste encore un instant" ("Stay Awhile"); German recordings include the July 1964 single, "Warten und hoffen" ("Wishin' and Hopin' ") backed with "Auf dich nur wart' ich immerzu" ("I Only Want to Be with You"); Italian recordings include "Tanto so che poi mi passa" ("Every Day I Have to Cry") issued as a single. Her entries at the Sanremo festival were "Tu che ne sai" and "Di fronte all'amore" ("I Will Always Want You").
Dusty Springfield is a cultural icon of the Swinging Sixties where she "was an instantly recognisable celebrity". In public and on stage Springfield developed a joyful image supported by her peroxide blonde bouffant hairstyle, evening gowns, and heavy make-up that included her much-copied "panda eye" mascara. Springfield borrowed elements of her look from blonde glamour queens such as Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve and pasted them together according to her own taste. By the 1990s she had also become a camp icon, with her ultra-glamorous look and this, combined with her emotive vocal performances, won her a powerful and enduring following in the gay community. Besides the prototypical female for drag queens, she was presented in the roles of the 'Great White Lady' of pop and soul and the 'Queen of Mods'.
So today, with little songs swirling all around, I choose Dusty Springfield’s cover of “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” as my, singin’ and swingin’, laugh a little, it’s only life anyway, song for a, children will listen, are you a good witch or a bad witch, call to the guardians, Monday.