1964 Sandie Shaw: (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me

If Helen Shapiro and Cilla Black were something of a pair of false starts in terms of 'swinging sixties' icons, then from her head to her bare feet, Dagenham's Sandie Shaw was always poster girl for the real thing. Doubly so when given a song to sing from fellow decade icons Bacharach and David.

Shaw wasn't the first to record this, but hers is the definitive interpretation. And it's definitive because like Cilla Black managed on 'Anyone Who Had A Heart', Shaw brings something fresh and unexpected to the table with a that vocal imputes an ambiguity to shift the implicit theme of Hal David's lyric from the sentimentality of lingering love to something rather less fond. Shaw's gambit on the opening warm horn led shuffle "I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me, and every step I take reminds me of just how we used to be" is indicative of fond remembrance of times past shared with her lover that bear the imprint of their passing (in the way Massenet's 'Manon' wept sentimental tears over a simple table laden with memories).

But the mood changes on the bridging "Oh, how can I forget you" that runs into the shrill yell of the title "When there is always something there to remind me" that borders on anger. Shaw's force of tone suggests she sees no virtue in being chained to her past ("I was born to love you, and I will never be free. You'll always be a part of me") and would rather be done with him totally, with the anger aimed partly at herself too for not being able to let go ("If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share, just go back to the places where we used to go and I'll be there").

Maybe I'm reading too much into it (something I'm prone to I'm afraid) but regardless, there's something delightfully fresh about Shaw's clean and naturalistic delivery. She may have had that barefoot gimmick going, but her vocal is all honesty and plays to its own strengths. There's none of the mock posturing of Cilla Black or prim faux classicism of a Petula Clark; Shaw's high notes shrill, the low ones boom and I kind of think this is exactly how she sounds when she sings in the shower too. Yet it's because of it's flaws that it carries an all too human, girl next door vulnerability that breaths life into the song the way Lou Johnson's original soul version doesn't. Or maybe those high notes are through Helen Shapiro sticking pins into a Sandie voodoo doll, a way of expressing her own anger at never been given something as fine to sing.