Playing solid Brit-soul outfit The Real Thing’s “Love’s Such A Wonderful Thing” for the first time and I’m stopped in my tracks twenty-five seconds in – “Love! Love’s such a wonderful thing – think of the joys it can bring – I GOT SO MUCH LOVE TO GI-IVE” – whu? Hey, hold on!
This shock of recognition is an ever-rarer pleasure, even though I try hard not to source or even find out where samples are from. Bangalter and DJ Falcon’s “So Much Love To Give” of course came from SOMEWHERE but it was a thrill to find it in this minor 1977 hit.
But what does it do to the Real Thing’s track? It annihilates it. Listening to “Love’s Such” I am willing it to stop and repeat every time it gets to that line – no, really guys, you’ve got it right there, just freeze the song… – and I’m disappointed, repeatedly, when it doesn’t. The original huffs and hoofs but is banjaxed by its own hidden genius, the perpetual climax of Bangalter/Falcon’s masterpiece poking through like cyberman steel under the ordinary skin.
(Or to use another Who metaphor, it’s like that bit in the Eccleston series when Richard Wilson is turned into a gasmask-face and can only repeat one phrase forever – except in this case the phrase is actually the one holy universal truth and if it was all any of us could say forever it would be a VERY GOOD THING)