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Tamla T 54100 (A), August 1964
b/w Feel Alright Tonight
(Written by Smokey Robinson and Ronnie White)
Motown didn’t know how they were going to deal with the departure of Mary Wells. The label put a brave face on it in public, press statements generally taking a stance along the lines of “we don’t need her, we’ve got the Supremes”, but behind closed doors, things were a bit less assured. The plan seems to have been to bring through a direct replacement, a battlefield promotion for some lucky female solo act who would inherit Mary’s material, Mary’s promotional push, Mary’s duet project with Marvin Gaye, and – hopefully – Mary’s sales.
Just a few days after Carolyn Crawford’s My Smile Is Just A Frown (Turned Upside Down) hit the street, Motown greenlit another 45 from another female solo turn who’d previously been sidelined. (Surely the sound of bets being hedged – for Motown to pit two prospects against each other like this in a potentially mutually-damaging head-to-head contest was a rather strange move.)
This was a third Motown single for big-voiced Agatha “Kim” Weston, but her first in nearly ten months, during which time she’d seen her place in the Hitsville pecking order slip steadily backward. After scoring an unexpected but excellent hit with Love Me All The Way a year and a half previously, she’d struggled to replicate that success with the follow-up Just Loving You, and her status as Possible Next Big Thing had apparently been shelved. Like Carolyn Crawford, Kim had reason to be grateful that Mary Wells’ sudden absence presented her with a window of opportunity.
That Kim ended up winning the New Mary role, over Carolyn and (apparently) Brenda Holloway, is a matter of record; it probably prolonged her Motown career and saw a few more great singles we might never otherwise have had, and so for that we too should be grateful. But there’s the definite appearance of Motown playing with a stacked deck. Not only was Kim due to be married to the label’s A&R director Mickey Stevenson, which raised questions of nepotism, but someone at Motown seems to have been pushing her cause ahead of other candidates.
This is a direct, brazen attempt to position Kim as the New Mary in the minds of the public, suggesting a decision had already been reached; Looking For The Right Guy is a virtual note-for-note rewrite of Wells’ mega-hit My Guy, from the same writer and producer. The fact that it wasn’t a hit (where Carolyn’s single had been, incidentally), and the equally important fact that it flat out just doesn’t work, were apparently seen as being of no significance.
Most sources list this as “obviously” being Smokey’s custom-made sequel to My Guy, intended as a follow-up for Wells herself, but there’s no evidence to suggest Mary was ever offered this.
There are good arguments both ways. Mary’s two follow-up singles had already been scheduled by Motown, catalogue numbers and all, when she left the company, and neither of them was Looking For The Right Guy (indeed, neither of them was really much like My Guy at all), so it seems unlikely that Motown would have changed their minds and fast-tracked a replacement soundalike sequel as a follow-up instead.
Plus, this would have been a particularly brazen example of the practice, even by Motown’s standards – it’s virtually the exact same song, and thus in Wells’ hands it would have made something of a pointless exercise (shades of Edwin Starr’s similarly-redundant Stop The War Now in 1970).
In the other column, this was written and produced by Smokey Robinson, acknowledged master of matching voice to material, and it seems barely credible Smokey would have written Kim a bespoke new song like this one which required her to sing so far outside her comfort zone (unless Motown had demanded it to strengthen the Kim-as-Mary connection, I suppose).
Whatever the case, Kim struggles terribly with singing this one. Possibly the best female vocalist Motown had on their books at the time, she just wasn’t this kind of singer – the uptempo numbers among her later triumphs are all the sort of thing that let her cut loose, display her power and strength, really cut into the material. This, by contrast, is a bouncy, sugary little thing that requires Kim to emulate Mary’s smoky semi-spoken contralto, wrapping her tongue around Smokey’s quickfire syllables, clipping her notes and thereby clipping her wings.
You can hear traces of the Kim we’ve already come to know and love whenever the song sounds like it’s about to let her soar – the middle eight, cut and pasted directly from My Guy and pitched higher and louder than the rest of the song (“He’ll have to be / A man of quality”) is a highlight, because it lets her sound a bit more like herself – but for the rest of it, she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself very much, her own special voice overshadowed and even in places drowned out, both by the arrangement and by the Andantes (who are on fine form, but whose voices just don’t properly blend wih Kim’s). It’s not her fault, but you can almost hear her frustration.
But it’s not just a poor match of vocalist and material; this would have been a mistake even if it had been given to Mary Wells, a misjudged attempt to take the perfectly-balanced love and devotion from My Guy a step further, casting the narrator not as someone who’s in love, but as a recently-single woman who’s seeking love, listing her requirements for the perfect man (essentially anyone who’ll be faithful, Kim coming a hair’s breadth from saying she’s prepared to settle, hence a hurried clarification that she is still looking for someone special and “not just any Tom, Dick or Harry”).
The song ends up as a mess, resulting in such shining feminist sentiments as I could spend my whole life long cooking for the right guy… loving him is my fate, which don’t sit well with the satisfied happiness of the backing track (an unbalanced retread of the one from My Guy, cleaner and crisper but much less warm and affectionate, somehow more mechanical).
Really not very good at all, a stark example of what happens when you try to squeeze a big-voiced R&B star vocalist into a pop framework cut to someone else’s measurements – but that’s not to overlook the fact the song itself isn’t very good either. Luckily for Kim, and for all music fans, Motown wouldn’t hold this against her, and they wouldn’t try this again.
MOTOWN JUNKIES VERDICT
(I’ve had MY say, now it’s your turn. Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment, or click the thumbs at the bottom there. Dissent is encouraged!)
You’re reading Motown Junkies, an attempt to review every Motown A- and B-side ever released. Click on the “previous” and “next” buttons below to go back and forth through the catalogue, or visit the Master Index for a full list of reviews so far.
(Or maybe you’re only interested in Kim Weston? Click for more.)
Carolyn Crawford “I’ll Come Running” |
Kim Weston “Feel Alright Tonight” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
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The Nixon Administration said:
This review is going to cause trouble, I’m sure, but today’s WordPress quote is a bit more appropriate than the last one:
“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.” – Tennessee Williams
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Stanley Blackwell said:
This is one the best songs to come out of Motown. Kim Weston did not get her true due because attention was being given to groups like the Supremes. Kim had a beautiful voice and she had class! I give this record an 11.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Stay tuned, Stanley: a new Kim review is just around the corner.
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Dave L said:
I didn’t hear this song until 1977. In Philadelphia, at the height of the disco craze, some Saturday night radio DJ made a practice of mixing it with contemporary stuff. I loved it immediately, and spent another dozen years chasing a 45 of it. Hunting any obscure 45 in the pre-Net days was a much more labor-intensive and worn-shoe exercise.
My decided disagreement with your ‘2’(!), Nixon, is emotional and not at all objective. My instinct too, is that Kim is not in love with her own song here, and the finished production does sound choppy to me.
But, imagine a stack of thus-far Motown greats on the 45 spindle of an automatic changer those days, and say, “Love Me All The Way” or “Just Loving You” slipped between “Heat Wave” and “Can I Get A Witness.” It would be like a teenage party stopped in its tracks to play a song “Mom likes.”
Sturdy as Kim’s first two single were, they can’t be argued to be trying to lure the same audience that’s now eagerly going for “Dancing In The Street,” “Where Did Our Love Go,” “I Like It LIke That” and “The Way You Do The Things You Do.”
Even if Kim didn’t like it, even if today, Smokey were to say “I’d do that differently now…,” I’m glad “Looking” exists. I’m glad there’s one record out there that gives the operatic Kim a break, casts her as a happy-go-lucky girl seeking a smooth running romance, and free of angst and dark undercurrents. No way is it as good as “A Thrill A Moment,” “Take Me In Your Arms,” and “Helpless” but it’s just right behind them in my affection.
Like the song or not, I won’t believe even Kim hoped it would so roundly fail as it did, especially if the Motown lore is true that Kim was offered “Dancing In The Street” when Mickey was just getting it together, and Kim passed on it. This one is a 7 with me, even if would have suited Wells better, even if Smokey could have polished it better. The bombastic Kim is gonna be back in her comfort zone soon enough, too.
🙂
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The Nixon Administration said:
Interesting point about the different style – 144man (I think) made a similar point when discussing Brenda Holloway’s “I’ll Always Love You”, big ballads not hitting the spot for teen audiences. Certainly Motown can’t be faulted for trying to put Kim in a different bag, especially if they were trying to find a like-for-like Mary Wells substitute. But I know Kim can do driving pop numbers better than this, too (my favourite song of hers is “Helpless”, for instance) – so for me, I think it’s just that it’s the wrong kind of pop, or the wrong approach to it.
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Dave L said:
Speaking of Wells, I’m keeping an eye on amazon.com for the promised biography, that was allegedly meant to arrive last November…
http://www.peterbenjaminson.com/mary_wells__the_tumultuous_life_of_motown_s_first_superstar__to_be_published_nov_104537.htm
I’m more than a little ready for a juicy new Motown book.
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The Nixon Administration said:
I think everyone is. Mary Wells has been due a proper biography for some time; this one had better ultimately materialise, because I don’t really want to have to do it myself 🙂
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Michael said:
I don’t think it’s as bad as a 2. I’d give it a 5.
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Robb Klein said:
This is also one of my favourite Motown recordings. I’d give it a 9. It’s not perfect. But the music is a wonderful melody, and I like the song’s structure. Kim does a good job on it. The fact that it doesn’t let Kim show her range and extend notes matters not. Lyrics matter little to me. This is mainly a matter of taste. I loved “My Guy”, “Any Girl In Love” and other “light”, more poppish songs, and yet, also like the Bluesy “Devil With A Blue Dress”, and “You Got Me Worried” (Hattie Littles), and yet detest Bluesy songs like “Who’s The Fool” (Sammy Ward) and am indifferent about the poppish “Baby Love”. I suppose there appears to be little if any consistency.
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The Nixon Administration said:
🙂 A music lover’s affections require no consistency and little justification. We all love what we love, and bollocks to what anyone else says we should love. Be proud and be vocal, just be passionate.
(Case in point, I find it interesting you say lyrics don’t matter so much to you – I usually have the complete opposite reaction, a good lyric or a poor turn of phrase can make or spoil a record for me. Different strokes, and all that.)
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John Plant said:
Just want to second your affirmation of the importance of lyrics, particularly in Motown songs – not just the text, but the way it’s delivered – an example would be the word ‘sweet’ ‘in the line ‘is her sweet expression…’ from Stop! in the name of love… The way Diana sets off the word, with a bitter little space on each side of it, lets us know that HER evaluation of her rival’s expression differs from that of her guy. Or the four hissed monosyllables of ‘Don’t Mess With Bill…’ An integral part of the flavour of the song – if you replaced the words with, say, ‘I like your face’ the song would disintegrate, as would 90% of this listener’s pleasure.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Great, that’ll be in my head all day now… 🙂
I like your face, bo bo bo bo
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Landini said:
Hey Buddies,
If anyone is inconsisitent in their music tastes it would be me. I can like a real r&b record & then go for lighter stuff. I also have a penchant for schmaltz (“Volare” etc). I remember driving my older brothers crazy. My one brother chastised me by saying “How can some who likes soul music so much like the Grassroots?” Well, I could go into a long dissertation about how the Grassroots’ songs employ many of the same elements as Motown – punchy horn arrangments – pop friendly danceable songs, etc. I could actually see the Four Tops maybe singing “Midnight Confessions”. Okay I’ll stop! My best to all!
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144man said:
I find this less twee than “My Guy”, but to be honest I’m not a big fan of either record. They’re too light and fluffy for me. They stimulate my tastebuds, but ultimately there’s no meat on the bones.
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Matt W said:
I’m with you, Mr. Nixon! Never could stand this one. Not nearly good enough to be a 1964 Motown A-side. They should have made it a Supremes B-side or something (or better yet, left it in the vaults.)
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m. l. Ford said:
I first heard this song in 1997 when I bought Kim’s Motown Compilation CD. To me it had a “My Guy” rendition similarity to it, I believe if Berry Gordy, Jr. and Smokey Robinson who was Motown’s vice president could have promoted this song and really pushed it, it would have been a success hit like “My Guy”. Mr. Nixon, while I am at it, can you start a blog on the Four Tops song “Just As Long As You Need Me” from their 1965 “Second Album”. The reason, an idea came to me that this song could have been released with some of the recording arrangements from “Reach Out (I’ll Be There). Especially from the drum beat sounding like galloping horses and even the guitar.
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John Lester said:
Oh dear. A 2 rating is not very good at all, is it!. I never really latched onto this song until I bought one of those Jobete samples called “Smokey The Writer” and then I went crazy for it. I rushed to buy the Tamla 45 and then realised I already had it on one of those UK EP’s. It made me realise I needed to play what I already had instead of trying to find something new.
It’s typical Smokey and could so easily have been given to a host of other artists like Carolyn Crawford and I’m surprised only Kim got to record it.
I’d personally side with Robb’s “9” rating.
Is it possible to avoid replications of the labels showing the cut-out holes. I have spent a great deal of my lifetime pursuing those non cut-outs and I’m sure someone can help you provide them without. Maybe I’m being too picky. Hey,. even I can do scans these days! Maybe not well but I do try!
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The Nixon Administration said:
Hi John,
Re: your last point. All scans are sent to me by visitors to the site (number of US Motown 45s I physically own: 0), and I use the best one I’ve been sent for any particular record. Gordon Frewin used to provide some quite beautiful scans but he’s unfortunately no longer contributing to the site. If you (or anyone else reading this) have an improvement I can use, please do send it to me!
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John Lester said:
That’s a shame Gordon is not about any more. He’s still the master in my book. I hope he’s doing well
How does one contact you….or is that a silly question?
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The Nixon Administration said:
Not at all! My e-mail is fosse8 at gmail dot com.
I hope Gordon comes back some day, and I’m sure lots of people feel the same way.
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Robb Klein said:
I have one of those West Coast pressings WITHOUT the holes. I will send a scan forthwith.
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ThinPaperWings said:
I’m really shocked at the 2 rating. I’d give it an 8 or a 9.
Love the melody, love the way Kim’s sings it. Her tone is great even though the notes don’t call for all the dynamism she is capable of displaying. (I do find it funny that Kim calls herself ‘a plain old ordinary girl’ as we all know she’s not.)
Yes, it’s similar to ‘My Guy,’ but, this sounds like a four chord sequence rather than the two chord thing of ‘My Guy.’ It’s just different enough for me.
And the vibe work echoing part of the main hook is a nice touch too.
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Landini said:
What? Only a 2? This is an outrage! Just kidding! I do like the song, but Miss Weston had plenty of even better songs in her reperitore. Keep up the good work Mr. Nixon!
It is interesting how Motown tried to make “the next Mary Wells” out of several of their singers like Brenda Holloway, Kim Weston, etc. Some non-Motown singers definitely had a Mary Wells feel to their voices – Jan Bradley, Jackie Ross, to name a few.
Does anyone remember “Lost in Emotion” by Lisa LIsa/cult jam from the late 80s? That song was a total Mary Wells jam.
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bogart4017 said:
Sure do—summer 1986 and yes i can hear Mary Wells doing her thing on that song. The breathy vocals and all…yeah, perfect fit.
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tomovox said:
Ok, for me “Looking For The Right Guy” has always occupied a rather gray area: I like it, I like it a LOT- but- it never sounded like a top ten tune, or even a top 40 tune to me. I heard it in the late 80’s and immediately took a liking to it.
Yes, it’s bouncy, and maybe a bit on the “cute” side, but I loved hearing a different side of Kim. I loved the way she enunciated every word, especially her reaing of the line “he’ll have to be a man of quality.” The work of Benny Benjamin’s drumming- those rapid-fire rat-a-tat-tat’s and stop-on-a-dime breaks had me working overtime on my drum set to master those drum licks.
I’ve read it many times, but I never thought this sounded anything like a follow-up to “My Guy.” “My Guy” was a Big Band Swing-meets-Motown affair and I always thought that song was what you’d get if Guy Lombardo suddenly developed a whole lot of Soul. “Looking For The Right Guy” just was another Smokey Robinson swing number and nothing more. I still don’t quite get the impression it was ever meant to be a “My Guy” follow up.
Still, while I like the recording, it’s one of those songs that you call a personal favorite, but would never expect that it would set record charts on fire. If anything, it would make a great album track providing Motown had given Kim one of those!
My impression years ago, when I was in my late teens and early 20’s and still new to the Motown story was that Motown never gave Kim one of those standard Motown Sound records. I recall the closest thing I felt had that Motown Zing (outside of “Take Me In Your Arms”) was “Thrill A Moment.” Then I heard this song and though…ahhh, they WERE trying to get her firmly planted in the Motown swing bag, but I kept thinking it was a somewhat pedestrian attempt, even though I enjoyed it.
Now more than ever, I think as you have commented before, Motown really didn’t know what to do with Kim (or did they just not try- if you’ve ever heard “You Hit Me Right Where It Hurt Me” you’d have to wonder if Motown was keeping Kim down on purpose…)
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bogart4017 said:
2? Not. 5 maybe.
So theres a lot wrong with this record. The piano line threatens to overwhelm Kim throughout. And she isn’t very convincing with the lyrics. The whole thing sounds putting Ella Fitzgerald’s vocals over the Beatles “Can’t Buy Me Love” (!).
But dammit its fun! Even if you don’t dance you can pat your foot.
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Kevin Moore said:
Smokey could sue himself for plagiarism and win on this one. It’s like they’re bending over backwards to hang a neon sign on every idea that’s taken from My Guy – from the chords to the melody to the choice of vowel sounds (“my guy” > “right guy” etc.), to the bridge. Motown used this carbon copy technique so often and yet it doesn’t often seem to yield a second hit. Very puzzling. All that said, the hooks it reuses are still very nice fresh hooks and it adds several new ones (like “some girls want a guy with money …”) (although I completely agree with bogart4017 about that overbearing piano answer to each line in the first part of the verse). That said – while it probably deserves the low rating for its shameless reuse of material I’d still rather listen to this than many of the more generic 3/, 4/ and 5/10s. It could be heard as “variations on themes from My Guy”, right?
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Landini said:
It seems like in the mid-1960s just about all of the solo female singers had to go through a “faux Mary Wells” phase. You have this record by Kim Weston & “When I’m Gone” by Brenda Holloway. Even the Supremes Wells-ed themselves through “Breath Taking Guy” & “Your Heart Belongs to Me”.
In 1972, I feel like Smokey Robinson took the Jean Terrell led Supremes through another Mary Wells styled romp with “Floy Joy”. I love that song and the entire FLOY JOY album!
On a personal note, I made it through some minor bladder surgery last week & am feeling pretty well. Thankful for everyone’s prayers & support.
Happy Thanksgiving to all! You know that holiday where we silly Americans eat ourselves into a stupor!
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Robb Klein said:
Hi Landini,
I hope that your posting more lately means that you are feeling better. Have a happy Thanksgiving. We Canadians had ours last month. Regarding Brenda Holloway’s singing Mary Wells’ songs, – that was more an attempt to use Brenda as the “New” Mary Wells, after the latter’s unexpected exit from Motown, rather than the company simply feeling that using those songs might result in some good sales. The same was probably NOT true for Kim Weston singing a “Mary Wells-type song”. THAT instance was probably just trying to use Smokey to give Kim’s career a boost.
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Abbott Cooper said:
And where the family gets together to relive animosities. Be well, Landini.
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Pyschedelic Jacques said:
pistols at dawn on this one, Nixon – if it’s dissent you want, then how on earth can you give “my lil’s run off” (along with about 75% of Mel-o-dy’s total output) a higher mark than this, this absolute GEM from Kim? Yes, it’s strange to hear a ‘softer’ style from possibly Motown’s best and most gutsy female vocalist, but I thinks it works so well wrapped up in Smokey’s bouncy lyrics and production. Interestingly, this looks like one of the few entries where the ‘disagrees’ outnumber the ‘agrees’, and there’s a good reason for that. 9 from me, too.
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Slade Barker said:
Oddly enough, my love for this song derives from Philadelphia — just like Dave L’s. I think it must have been a big hit locally there. It was often played on a Dance Party-type show I listened to religiously in the 1980s. The dancers seemed to love it. (Yes, they had dancers — on the radio.) And guess what, Pres. Nixon? It never occurred to me that it sounded like “My Guy”!
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Slade Barker said:
I also feel it really grows on you when you hear it a lot — and apart from “My Guy,” perhaps.
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Don't Mess With Will said:
This is around a 4 for me. It’s just not that interesting. And I agree that it doesn’t fit Kim at all, even if she does give a good performance. Really this song is less Mary Wells than it is Little Peggy March (“loving him is my fate” should make you think of a certain song…). The lyrics are thin and girly, the tune is unimaginative. One of the weaker moments is when Kim sings the title and the piano plinks out the same tune, as if this were some kind of elementary school sing-along.
That being said, Kim and the Andantes give nice vocals and there’s also good work from the musicians (especially the drum fills that were mentioned above). This would’ve been fine as an album track, but it’s too gentle, too boring to ever become a hit. Perhaps I find “My Guy” so much more compelling because Mary injects so much passion, pride and confidence into her reading. Kim does her best to sound devoted and idealistic (bleh) in a much more passive song.
I saw “Any Girl in Love,” one of my favorite Kim Weston songs, mentioned above. It may seem “light” but it is so much more complex than “Right Guy” (of course it might be easier to write an interesting sad song than an interesting happy song). I think of how the bridge (“I gave you my love / in you I had no doubt”) lets her soar up, then fall back to earth with a sigh. “Any Girl”‘s currents of anguish, betrayal and confusion suit Kim so much better, to the point where she makes the Supremes version, pretty as it is, sound bland by comparison.
Now I’m reminded of “I Know his Name,” which, like “Right Guy,” seemed a bit immature for Kim. Yet that song’s louder sound lets her assert herself. Still I always smirk at the “I dropped my handkerchief” bit! Uuuum like what century was this?
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Rosanne said:
I absolutely love this song. I’m not musically educated like the author of this article but I love the beat, the sound, the backup singers and of course Kim Weston. I don’t notice her struggle or annoyance either.
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