Chart entered : 31 August 1991
Chart peak : 51 ( 13 in a re-mix in 1992 )
Number of hits : 11
Des'ree has one of the shortest back stories of anyone featured here.
Desiree Weeks was born in South London in 1968. Her parents were from Guyana and Barbados. She sent a demo tape to Lincoln Elias at Sony because he had signed her idol Terence Trent D'Arby and he liked it. She was signed up and put in the studio with former Imagination bassist Ashley Ingram.
This was her debut single, released just twelve weeks after she signed for the label. It's a straight account of being lost in love, rather clumsily expressed at times - "I know I bore them but they do it to me sometimes". Des'ree's deep voice is very upfront in the mix and her verbosity doesn't give the smooth jazz arrangement much room to breathe. As with Annie Lennox, you wish she'd take a step back from the mike every now and then. A crisper re-mix, making the too-eighties fretless bass less obvious, was a bigger hit the following year.
Someone with a fine enough voice, but hamstrung by lack of real songwriting talent - especially around lyrics: she'd drop a real clunker later in her career that still raises chortles years on.
ReplyDeleteIndeed so - as confirmed by a Radio 6 poll a decade ago. Katie Melua has spent her career trying to top it but hasn't quite managed it yet.
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