Sandie Shaw – (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me

She Gave Away “It’s Not Unusual” — And Still Ended Up With A Number One

Sandie Shaw was seventeen years old, had one failed single to her name, and was still working shifts at the Ford factory in Dagenham when her manager Eve Taylor flew back from New York with a record tucked under her arm. Taylor had heard Lou Johnson performing “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” on a US promotional visit and immediately knew it belonged in a British girl’s voice. Shaw recorded it, premiered it on Ready Steady Go!, and watched it climb to number one in the UK in three weeks flat — spending three weeks at the top in November 1964 and knocking Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” from the summit. Not bad for a second single.

In the UK, the song was a phenomenon. It also hit number one in Canada and South Africa, charted in Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, and eventually crept to number 52 on the Billboard Hot 100 — modest by American standards, but Shaw’s version had beaten Lou Johnson’s own US original, which had peaked at 49. Johnson had actually appeared on Top of the Pops promoting his version while Shaw’s was quietly overtaking him. Bacharach escorted Johnson to the BBC performance himself, unaware the song was already gone.

The song began life as a Dionne Warwick demo. Burt Bacharach and Hal David had written it specifically for Johnson — a Brooklyn R&B singer whose voice could wring genuine heartbreak from a lyric — and Warwick laid down the guide vocal in 1963 purely to help present it to him. There was brief internal discussion about whether Warwick should simply release it herself, given her hot streak with “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “Walk on By.” She didn’t. The song passed to Johnson, Johnson took it to a modest 49, and Shaw made it immortal — at least in Britain.

The recording was produced by Tony Hatch, the man behind Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and captured at a pace and clarity that still sounds fresh sixty years on. Shaw performed it entirely barefoot — her signature, a habit she’d kept since childhood that became an accidental style statement and landed her the nickname “the barefoot pop princess of the Sixties.” The combination of Hatch’s clean production and Shaw’s effortlessly controlled delivery gave the song a poise that Bacharach himself approved of warmly.

Shaw’s career in 1964 was built on instincts that were occasionally self-defeating and occasionally genius. That same year, she heard a demo from an unknown Welsh singer and decided the song wasn’t right for her — so she handed it back. Tom Jones released “It’s Not Unusual” and went to number one. To her credit, she’d had the sense to insist the song went to the right artist rather than simply grabbing it. The Bacharach and David song she kept instead turned out to be rather good.

The song’s afterlife kept growing. Naked Eyes took it to number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983, giving it the American success it had never quite found the first time round. R.B. Greaves recorded a soulful version with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section that reached number 27 in the US in 1970. Shaw herself re-recorded it in French, Italian, and German, with varying results. In 1984, Morrissey and Johnny Marr of The Smiths wrote Shaw a letter declaring that her legend couldn’t be over yet — and she re-emerged to record their debut single “Hand in Glove,” one of the more unexpected comeback stories of the decade.

Today — February 26 — is Sandie Shaw’s birthday. She turns 78, and “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” remains the first great thing she ever did: a number one hit recorded at seventeen, barefoot, on her second ever single, for a song originally designed for someone else entirely. Some people just know how to make something their own.