#arliss

Target Acquired!!!!

Dusty Springfield's Golden Hits Dusty Springfield 1966, Philips

These early Dusty Springfield singles really get the “Wall of Sound” production treatment, despite Mr. Spector’s absence from the credits: mixed loud as hell like the kids liked it, screaming string charts, backing vocals en regalia, and a big beat knocking around underneath. Folks love to cite her as the second artist of the British Invasion to hit the U.S. charts, and for cultural reasons that may be significant, but her early sound was indistinguishable from American acts like Lesley Gore and the Shirelles. I don’t know many of the details about her career, but it seems like whoever was managing her was hell-bent on breaking her in the States. Call it a credit to English ingenuity (and specifically arranger Ivor Raymonde) that they were able to give Springfield a knock-out sound that passes for the contemporary Hollywood (or Detroit) product.

Dusty Springfield’s Golden Hits, her first major compilation, is Brill Building / girl group-style music par excellence, with a murderer’s row of hitwriters from both sides of the pond (Bacharach/David, Goffin/King, Beatrice Verdi/Buddy Kaye, etc.). Practically anyone could’ve had chart success with these songs and this packaging (and a number of these were subsequently hits for others), but Springfield had a cannon of a voice on her that makes the best of these numbers undeniable. Those who place her voice with the Arethas and Dionne Warwicks wish she’d been guided towards soul or sophisticated torch songs from the start, but I personally love it when someone vocally overqualified for bubblegum is made to tear into a good bop. “I Only Want to Be With You” is buffeted along by the force of her voice, the violins shrieking like a 33rpm record dragged up to 45; “Little By Little” could’ve been written for a Motown powerhouse like Darlene Love (but scarcely improved on by her); “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” moves from the sound of a girl sadly combing her hair before her vanity to Sampson bringing down the temple.

There’s plenty of treacle here, and “Wishin’ and Hopin’” probably set feminism further back than “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),” but this is a worthy addition to any ‘60s pop library.

Gorgeous gorgeous girl 🥺<3

Rita Wu-Arliss

I was extremely excited when I found out that Vanity Fair career retrospective of Sandra Oh.

Not just that. When I clicked play? There were actual captions. Not just AI captions (which some of the other retrospectives have). I don't think the impact would have been as big if it was just those automated captions popping up on screen.

(Let me know if you have the story behind those captions! Was there someone in Vanity Fair that specifically went out of their way to transcribe the video? Or was it a viewer who contributed?)

PS: Find the video here!

First off, I’d like to provide a small explanation as to who these characters are. In case you hadn’t seen the post prior to this one, the above concepts (and anything else tagged, “Corruptundra”) were from an old collab blog with @nontoxic-markers.

Disclaimer: Art is incredibly old...

Info under the cut:

My Tumblr Crushes:

radioactivedean

whiskeycherrypie

spncreatorsdaily

spn-idjits-guide-to-hunting

lockzinhas

canonspngifs

aborddelimpala

arliss

hallowedbecastiel

The best thing is to see that ep and compare it to how flawlessly Sandra aged, how she’s still celebrated not just by us but by the media as a desirable woman in Killing Eve 18 years after that episode dropped