Your classic Dusty Springfield comeback song of the day is “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” This track was released by Pet Shop Boys, with Dusty contributing guest vocals, in August of 1987. It was a big hit, going all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart, and #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles list. It also hit #2 on the UK Singles chart, #3 in Canada, and #1 in Ireland.
Prior to this record, Dusty hadn’t had a top 40 hit since 1970’s “How Can I Be Sure” and was currently without a recording contract. Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant, who co-wrote the song back in 1984, went through a list of potential duet partners, finally settling on Dusty; her Dusty in Memphis album just happened to be his favorite LP. Unfortunately, the PSP’s record label didn’t think Dusty was a draw anymore and instead suggested singers like Barbra Streisand and Tina Turner. Tennant, however, insisted on Dusty and had his manager call up her manager to work something out.
Dusty, however, wasn’t interested, at least not initially, so Tennant left the song off the album the Boys were then working on. It took a few months but Dusty did a little listening to the charts, discovered she liked the Boys’ “West End Girls” single, and had her manager get back in touch saying she would do the track after all. Dusty flew into London from her then-home in California to do the recording in late December 1986.
Tennant recalls the recording session with the legendary songstress:
“She arrived at the studio on time, in a black leather designer jacket and high-heeled boots, with blonde hair and black eye make-up, clutching the lyric-sheet of the song, annotated and underlined. Chris Lowe, Stephen Hague, and I began to consult with the legend about how to sing our song and she was very nice, surprisingly a little lacking in self-confidence. As if by telepathy, a Dusty fan appeared on the studio doorstep and was invited in to listen. Dusty’s English secretary arrived bearing a new compilation cassette. ‘They keep repackaging the old songs,’ the legend marveled. Then she went through to sing.
“Her voice was the same as ever. When she sang her solo part ‘Since you went away …’ everyone in the control room smiled. She sounded just like she used to. Breathy, warm, thrilling. Like Dusty Springfield.”
Imagine that—Dusty Springfield sang just like Dusty Springfield.
That said, the session didn’t go completely smoothly. Dusty has a history of being difficult in the studio, especially hard on herself and wanting to re-record tracks over and over until they were perfect, at least to her discerning ears. Julian Mendelsohn was doing the mixing that day and recalled how it went:
“Even though Dusty was a great singer, she was very long‑winded when it came to getting the vocals right to her own satisfaction […] I remember Neil and I looking at each other as if to say, ‘Christ, this is going to take forever.’ And it did take forever. We ended up having to sift our way through 20 tracks of vocals, but we got a fantastic result in the end, at which point we looked at each other as if to say, ‘Well, that’s why she took so long.'”
The result was a marvelous piece of pop confection, very mid-80s sounding yet, because of Dusty’s vocals, classic. Writer Catherine Gee of The Daily Telegraph called it “possibly the greatest pop song in history.” I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is pretty damned good, and it’s also damned good to hear Dusty’s voice on a record again after far too long.
Between her last big hit (16 years prior) and this one, Dusty’s life was a bit of a roller coaster. After the only moderate successes of 1969’s Dusty in Memphis (with the hit “Son of a Preacher Man,” #10 on the Billboard Hot 100) and 1970’s A Brand New Me (with the lesser hit, “Brand New Me,” #24 on the Hot 100), Dusty dropped out of her contract with Atlantic Records. She sang backup on a couple of tracks on friend Elton John’s 1971 album, Tumbleweed Connection (my favorite Elton John record), signed with ABC Dunhill Records, and released the album Cameo in 1973, to lackluster reviews and sales. She recorded some themes for a few TV shows, including The Six Million Dollar Man and Growing Pains, and released a few utterly forgettable albums in the late ’70s. Mainly, though, Dusty was going through a turbulent personal life, moving to California, getting into a violent and self-destructive lesbian relationship, and living pretty much like a recluse. The invitation from Pet Shop Boys likely rescued her from a later life of obscurity.
“What Have I Done to Deserve This?” recharged Dusty’s career, at least a little. In 1989 she released two singles, “Nothing Has Been Proved” and “In Private,” both written and produced by Pet Shop Boys, which became top twenty hits in the UK. The Boys also wrote and produced half the songs for her 1990 comeback album, Reputation, which peaked in the top twenty in the UK. Around the same time, Dusty moved from California back to the UK. In 1995 she released A Very Fine Love, an album of country music songs (originally to be titled Dusty in Nashville). The last song she recorded, also in 1995, was a version of the Gershwins’ “Someone to Watch Over Me” for an insurance company commercial.
By that time, Dusty had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It went into remission for a short while but returned in full force by the middle of 1996. Dusty passed away from that cancer on March 2, 1999, one month shy of her 60th birthday and just two weeks before her friend Elton John inducted her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As part of his induction speech, Elton said:
“I’m biased, but I just think she was the greatest white singer there ever has been … every song she sang, she claimed as her own.”
I do not disagree with that assessment. I think Dusty Springfield was one of the top female vocalists of the 1960s, right up there with the likes of Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin. Her album Dusty in Memphis is a masterpiece, easily one of the top ten (if not the top five) albums of the rock era. It’s a shame that she wasn’t able to better navigate the changing musical waters and have a strong second career, like Cher or Tina Turner, but I guess that wasn’t her style. We’re fortunate that we got a bit of a resurgence from her in the late 1980s, thanks in no small part to Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. What did we do to deserve that?
To close things out, here’s a live performance of “What Have I Done to Deserve This” by Dusty and the Boys from 1988’s BRIT Awards. Dusty looks like she’s really enjoying herself and she’s certainly singing her heart out. It’s a joy to watch.
