Dionne Warwcik: 4on2 CD Box Set Vol. 4

I’ll Never Fall in Love Again ’70; # 7 / 23) / Very Dionne (’70; # 8 / 37) / Dionne (’72; # 22 / 54) / Just Being Myself (’73; # - / 178) – EDSK 7053 (2 CDs)

-         charted singles: I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, Let Me Go to Him, Paper Mache, Make It Easy on Yourself, The Green Grass Starts to Grow, Who Gets the Guy, Amanda, If We Only Have Love, (I’m) Just Being Myself

  Bacharach and David composed seven out of ten songs on the first of these four albums, and some of them are quite infectious (The Wine Is Young, Loneliness Remembers, Let Me Go to Him), while others tend to be too schmaltz.  The title song, I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, became a top-ten pop hit, and Dionne recorded Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head approximately the same time as B.J. Thomas.

  Alongside four B&D tunes, Very Dionne is again packed with familiar songs with quite rosy arrangements.  They Don’t Give Medals (to Yesterday’s Heroes) and Going out of My Head get big-voiced treatments from Dionne.  Among the ten bonus tracks there’s the melodic He’s Moving On, a fast hillbilly titled California, a nice duet with B.J. Thomas on Make it Easy on Yourself and a sweet cover of Gene Pitney’s ’62 hit, Only Love Can Break a Heart.

  For Dionne’s first Warner album, Dionne, they chose seven B&D songs, and actually this was the last time the threesome worked together.  The material is smooth and mainly slow but again slightly too sophisticated and sweet – soft pop music, in fact.  They had a bigger production budget, and it shows especially on the big ballad called If We Only Have Love.

  Holland-Dozier-Holland was the production team on Just Being Myself, and they also wrote most of the songs.  Although commercially this album was a flop and the material wasn’t initially written for Dionne, I think the record is undervalued and is actually much more soulful than the Soulful album.  It includes the punchy and dramatic I Think You Need Love, the melodic and romantic You Are the Heart of Me, the touching Don’t Let My Teardrops Bother You, the mid-tempo Come Back and the powerful Don’t Burn the Bridge (that Took You Across).  Looking now back at all these sixteen albums, I declare this last one to be the winner.  And it was released just two years prior to my all-time favourite album by Dionne Warwick, Track of the Cat, produced by Thom Bell. 

© Heikki Suosalo