1966 Dusty Springfield: You Don't Have To Say You Love Me

In terms of a pecking order of sixties female British vocalists, I think Dusty Springfield would always take top tier on my own personal podium. Her very name is the stuff of icon and legend that's endured within her chosen field far better than any of her contemporaries with nary a hint of the baggage of tacky nostalgia. Dusty's talent lay in her astonishing voice and the interpretative skills she put it to from Marble Arch to Muscle Shoals so it's with a sharp intake of breath that realisation dawns that despite a back catalogue of absolute gems, 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' was her sole number one. It's also one of my least favourite of her songs.

The flip side to the kiss off of 'These Boots Are Made For Walkin'', 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' is an English language version (with lyrics by Simon Napier-Bell) of the Italian "Io che non vivo (senza te)". It's Italiana pedigree remains resplendent in the wash of aria drama provided by the swell of the orchestrated build up laying the foundation for Dusty's introduction, but when it comes it's only for Napier Bell's lyrics to paint her as a woman shameless in her need, an automaton unable to function without her lover (and no, I'm not going into any gay subtext here, mainly because it's irrelevant).

"Don't you see that now you've gone and I'm left here on my own, that I have to follow you and beg you to come home?" - Dusty emotes for all her worth and sounds all too believable in her distress - "You don't have to say you love me, just be close at hand. You don't have to stay forever, I will understand. Believe me, believe meeeeee" she cries and believe her we do, but there's something downright unappetising about such a strong and soulful voice prostrating itself as a helpless doormat to be walked over, particularly when the lush swirl of Ivor Raymonde's orchestration wraps it up in a bow that gives it the sheen of virtue.

Dusty had already portrayed the lost without love angle in previous (and superior) singles like 'I Only Want To Be With You' and 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself', but here the need goes beyond love, beyond loving to something unhealthy and, quite frankly, unenjoyable. Compare and contrast with her version of Goffin and King's 'I Can't Make It Alone' (from 1969's 'Dusty In Memphis') which essays a similar theme albeit in a more sympathetic way - "I've tried and I know I can't make it alone, it's such a hard way to go. I just can't make it alone, there's something in my soul that will always lead me back to you" Dusty sounds like she's crying to herself in the dark in a voice we are not meant to be overhearing. It's a superior song all round.

By contrast, 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' has any sympathy or sensitivity beaten out of it by the bombast of the music and a rather ugly, rather clumsy lyric of self humiliation that makes it an exercise in salt rubbing, of a deliberate public airing of the dirtiest washing that inappropriately reminds me of those pictures of Viennese Jews being forced to scrub the streets with a toothbrush in the 1930's - Dusty makes the song sound something magnificent, but such a voice and presence shouldn't be robbed of its dignity in this way.