BOBBIE GENTRY - “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again”
(#278, 18th October 1969)
Like a lot of songs from musicals, “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” sounds incomplete somehow, a stage in a particular journey. The bitter lyrics and the warm, whimsical delivery stand in such sharp contrast that you know there’s going to be a resolution one way or another. In the context of the pop charts, though, we never find out the ending, so Gentry’s song has to stand on its own as a confused, rueful moment.
I’ve never seen - or heard - Promises, Promises, so it should be easy for me to hear it like that, but the song still seems awkward. Gentry, sounding like she has a heavy cold, plays it pretty straight and sweet, and doesn’t put any special stress on Hal David’s cleverer couplets - specifically the “pneumonia”/”phone ya” rhyme, the artifice of which jumps out even more as a result. Stripped of context, what I get is some lovely hooks in service of a record that’s too cute for its own good. 6
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FT's CarsmileSteve on September 25th, 2006
and yet, the Deacon Blue versh (the first one i knew) takes it too far the other way, straining for OTT emotion that the song can’t quite cope with…
…i assume there are a million other versions.
FT's Tom on September 25th, 2006
Yes, the Dionne Warwick one is the best I know. Deacon Blue’s is pants obv.
This one brings the tune out nicely though.
Marcello Carlin on September 25th, 2006
Better harmonies, too; the heartbreaking slip into the minor key on the first “again” doesn’t appear on the Warwick version; the latter is more of a shrug of the shoulders.
Actually you are OTM - Gentry did have a cold when she recorded the song!
Curiously the single did nothing in the States - I wonder why, out of all the Bacharach and David catalogue, this managed to go all the way whereas “Walk On By” or “Alfie” or “This Guy’s In Love” didn’t? Slow week?
FT's rosie on September 25th, 2006
This Guy’s In Love was, now that I think of it, one of the three titles that tied at the top of the BBC Top of the Pops chart in the summer of 1968.
jeff w on September 25th, 2006
Cold or no cold I’m not convinced Gentry was ever all that comfortable doing straight pop, although her take on “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” is probably the best I’ve heard.
Mark M on September 25th, 2006
Uncharacteristically grudging marks on this and Je T’aime, Tom, although indeed neither is a particularly highpoint in the singer’s career…
FT's Tom on September 25th, 2006
I actually revised this one up from a 5 at the last minute, despite my concerns about RAMPANT MARK INFLATION overtaking us.
Marcello Carlin on September 25th, 2006
Typical, Sinker always gets the blame…
fivelongdays on September 25th, 2006
I never knew this was from a musical!
FT's wwolfe on September 25th, 2006
Dionne Warwick’s version was the first single I ever bought (b/w “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?,” which I prefer as a song), along with Jackie DeShannon’s “What the World Needs Now” and the Ohio Express’s “Yummy Yummy.” I guess I was a big Bacharach/David fan, unknowingly, as a 10-year old.
I’ve never heard Gentry’s version. In fact, the only song of hers I’ve heard is “Ode to Billy Joe.” (Although I have heard “Fancy,” a big hit for Reba McEntire in 1991 written by Gentry.)
It seems like Gentry’s cover of this song might have been a move by her handlers to take a country act mainstream in a classy way, possibly with Vegas aor a variety show as the ultimate goal. In 1969, there were few more certain signs of classy mainstream pop than a Bacharach/David song.
Or, she might have just liked the song.
FT's Doctor Mod on September 26th, 2006
Bobbie Gentry is one of those enigmatic artists who had a huge success, stayed in the limelight for only a short time, then vanished. (Much the same could be said about Mary Hopkin, whose career, for all intents and purposes, lasted three years.)
I really never knew that Gentry had recorded this song until very recently. Considering the sheer original genius that created the self-penned “Ode to Billy Joe”–surely one of the most extraordinary recordings of the 1960s–it seems strange that Gentry, only two years later, would be covering a Bacharach-David song that Dionne Warwick had already put on the charts. To move from the raw country-inflected beauty of “Ode” to the super-slick insincerity of this song seems to be a matter of backsliding, but then few “country” artists got mainstream acclaim in the 1960s, and I suppose this is an attempt to gain a mainstream audience. Even so, Bobbie Gentry was never a garden-variety country singer. (When did you ever hear a string quartet accompanying a country singer?) She had a lot of crossover potential, did a credible version of “Son of a Preacher Man” (and this is coming from a die-hard Dusty devotee), and could also put out some genuine blue-eyed soul. Thus, this song seems an odd choice for her.
This isn’t to say that she doesn’t put a lot of effort into it–even to the point of steering away from its cloying “cuteness” and giving her best to make it sound sincere. But alas, the lyrics can’t sustain any real emotion–Dionne, the perfect Bacharach/David interpreter made it clear that the self-pity was also self-parody that would last only a moment–”so for at least until tomorrow.” Even then, it wasn’t one of Dionne’s very best, either.
It would be a pity to remember Bobbie Gentry for this song alone.
wichita lineman on June 2nd, 2008
This was an album track pulled randomly for a single, surely. Not only does Bobbie have a cold but it almost prevents her from hitting the high notes - isn’t it in the wrong key for her?
The BBC still has tapes of her 1968 tv show which are quite something. She plays up the southern belle bit to the hilt and has guests like Donovan and The Hollies going all gooey-eyed. And yes she sings her own songs, just her and an acoustic guitar.
Maybe it was different stateside where it was even harder for a self-made woman to admit as much publicly than it was in Cilla-lovin’ Britain. No dope, Bobbie was happy to sing other people’s (well, men’s) songs on tv and on record. Her albums alternate between self-penned (Ode To Billie Joe, the phenomenal Delta Sweete) and ones that were heavy with covers (Local Gentry, Touch ‘Em With Love). The covers are classy, usually country soul-tinged, and some were obviously good enough to make number one without breaking sweat (or breaking out the cold remedies).
For my money, maybe after Dusty, she has the most sensual voice in all pop: Courtyard and Mornin’ Glory from The Delta Sweete make me hold my breath the way The Look Of Love, and pretty much nothing else, can.
It’s hard to hear the unapologetic Fancy - a UK flop released after this made no.1 and follow-up All I Have To Do Is Dream made 3 - without thinking it has an autobiographical element. Is Bobbie G seen as a feminist heroine? At least by Bust readers?
DJ Punctum on June 2nd, 2008
No idea, unless you count getting married to a millionaire old enough to be your father and hence not needing to work for last 30 years “heroic.”
FT's and everybody elses Mark G on June 2nd, 2008
That line, “So, for at least until tomorrow’ one of the biggest ‘get-out’ lines since “what would we do without them?” in “I hate men” from “Kiss me kate”…
wichita lineman on June 2nd, 2008
Re 13: Well she worked in tv, behind the scenes, for several years after she stopped making records. She was also a Vegas dancer running her own troupe while studying music at college. So I guess she knows what she’s got, is also phenomenally talented, and has made the most of both. I’m impressed.
I wasn’t suggesting she was Andrea Dworkin. It was a genuine question, not really directed at men!