Dusty Springfield
Reputation

THE REVIEW

In the late 1980s, the fifty-year-old Dusty Springfield made a comeback thanks to a successful duet with the Pet Shop Boys. What Have I Done To Deserve This and the album Actually were a kind of godsend for Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe in the UK.

The famous performer then decided to release this Reputation, once again topping the charts after years and years of appearing and disappearing.

Most of the tracks were written for her by Dan Hartman and by Tennant and Lowe themselves. Notably, Nothing Has Been Proved, which they gave to Springfield and wrote for the soundtrack of the film Scandal. Passion, politics, and crime are the recurring themes.

The style of the compositions—alien to Dusty's standards—perfectly represents those golden years which she did not live so lavishly. Omnipresent keyboards create the right atmosphere for the hit Arrested By You, perhaps the most intimate and cautious track of the work. I believe, despite its hyperproduction, that the album did justice to the woman.

For about two decades, that sacred monster of Springfield had not received the due consecration and deserved recognition.

The press was more interested in her sexual orientation and self-mutilation than in her music. At the dawn of Reputation, thanks to the admiration that the Pet Shop Boys—and even Quentin Tarantino of Pulp Fiction—nurtured for her, she returned to the spotlight to musically live the last dignified years of her troubled life.

You try and you try again, you leave me to cry again.