Song of the Day: Dusty Springfield “Baby Blue (Disco Version)”

“Baby Blue” is a compulsively dance-able disco stomp from the great UK-born, blue-eyed soul singer Dusty Springfield. As you may remember, we’ve previously featured a pair of songs by Springfield on the site. By the time “Baby Blue” was released in 1979, Springfield‘s career had peaked and she was drifting into obscurity. Like many other soul, pop and R&B artists of the time, she opted to take a stab at the then-current disco craze. The results ended up being quite good, if not so much commercially as in terms of quality output. Springfield’s husky, sultry yet soulful voice proved to be a perfect fit for some Moroder-esque synth-driven dance grooves. The rich use of strings also feels like a flash-back to the lush orchestral pop and soul that Springfield made her name recording.

“Baby Blue” was hardly a one-off. Springfield managed to chart a number of other solid disco offerings throughout the late 70’s and 80’s including “That’s The Kind of Love I Got For You” and the entirety of her White Heat album. She would later branch into disco-inflected synth pop with “Nothing Has Been Proved” and “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” songs she recorded with the backing of the Pet Shop Boys and which would prove to be her last two truly great singles.