More rare but sparkling musical gems await us with another entry into our Pop Essays series. This week: a song from the soundtrack of a Richard Curtis romcom classic from 2003 – but probably not any of the ones you’re thinking of…
- Artist: Texas
- Song: I’ll See It Through
- Released: 08/12/2003
- Writers / Producers: Sharleen Spiteri / Johnny McElhone / Guy Chambers
- Highest UK Chart Position: #40
- Chart Run: 40 – 57 – 65
The career of Scottish rock band Texas has lasted 35 years, namely because it has been anything but ordinary or linear. Launching in 1989 with their first single, the classic “I Don’t Want A Lover”, it was, for many years, the one hit that they were most closely associated with and known for in this country.
As Sharleen Spiteri, their charismatic and soulful voiced frontwoman once said, there was a stage where they had a prominent career in mainland Europe, and France in particular, but “in Britain we couldn’t get arrested”. That was of course, until she moved to Paris with her bandmate and songwriting partner, Johnny McElhone, to write their fourth studio album, and the one that would eventually go onto be one of the 90s biggest selling albums: 1997’s White On Blonde.
Home to five top 10 hits, including the massive “Say What You Want”, “Halo” and “Black Eyed Boy”, it spent a total of two weeks at number one, a year and a half in the top 40, and finished up six times platinum for sales of well over 1.6 million copies. Success in this second wind continued on into both 1999’s The Hush and their first retrospective, The Greatest Hits, in 2000, with hits such as “Summer Son”, “In Demand” and “Inner Smile”.
It was perhaps inevitable, therefore, that this sustained degree of success would catch up with them eventually, as they were to discover with the release of their sixth studio album, Careful What You Wish For, in October 2003. By this point, it had been three years since The Greatest Hits, and four since The Hush, although the singles from it had maintained a regular presence on radio airwaves in that time.
It goes without saying that this was a period of time in music where anything longer than two years out of the public eye before new music was released was enough to wrong foot momentum even slightly. Some of the reason behind this gap was because of the extensive touring the band did off the back of The Greatest Hits, but another factor was Sharleen – quite rightly – taking some time out when she became a new mum to her daughter, Misty Kyd, born in 2002.
Careful What You Wish For was actually a fine record, and marked a natural sonic evolution on its immediate predecessors, which had seen them collaborate with the likes of Dallas Austin and Gregg Alexander amongst others. On this album, their collaborators included Ian Broudie from The Lightning Seeds, and the renowned UK Garage producer and DJ, Ceri “Sunship” Evans.
Whilst we’re loathed to call its initial performance an underachievement, comparatively speaking, the #9 entry and peak of its first single, “Carnival Girl”, featuring Canadian rapper Kardinal Offishal, and the #5 entry and initial two week stay in the top 40 of the album chart, meant that there was clearly work to be done building their name back up again.
Fortunately, one of the album’s surefire highlights was being prepped for release as its second single, and just had the happy coincidence of being on the soundtrack of one of the year’s most highly anticipated movies. Like almost all his other films, Richard Curtis‘ seasonal romantic comedy blockbuster, Love Actually, had a soundtrack that was chock-a-block with hits, including some that were already well known in their own right (hello to you, Dido’s “Here With Me” and The Calling’s “Wherever You Will Go”).
That said, some were undoubtedly better remembered and more successful than others in terms of the pecking order that singles from the film’s soundtracks appeared. Indeed, it was not the first time Texas had graced one of his film’s soundtracks – their 1999 top 10 hit “In Our Lifetime” was included in Notting Hill.
So in the same way Wet Wet Wet had the biggest hit from Four Weddings And A Funeral with “Love Is All Around”, and Geri Halliwell and Gabrielle had the biggest hits from Bridget Jones’ Diary with “It’s Raining Men” and “Out Of Reach”, the two biggest hits from Love Actually were, by some distance, Girls Aloud’s cover of The Pointer Sisters‘ “Jump”, which had peaked at #2 and was still in the top 20 by Christmas, and Sugababes‘ dramatic Diane Warren penned ballad “Too Lost In You”, released a week after this single for the Christmas chart and which was a top 10 hit.
As some of the other singles released off the soundtrack proved – here’s looking at you, Kelly Clarkson’s “The Trouble With Love Is” and Billy Mack (aka Bill Nighy in character as the titular faded rock star he plays in the film) with “Christmas Is All Around” – there was evidently only so much mileage that having a sticker with the words “From the soundtrack to Love Actually” stuck to the front of the CD case were going to take your single.
What arguably didn’t work in Texas’ favour was that, in the film itself, the song was almost quietly shunted away, barely audible, playing from a tinny office radio in a scene halfway through the film, for less than 30 seconds – or so it seemed – which offers some clue as to the eventual fate of “I’ll See It Through”. Which is a terrible shame, because this is actually a gorgeous song in both its writing and production.
Written with Guy Chambers, it’s a stunning, swooning and dramatic piano laden ballad with a bluesy guitar riff, of the kind that starts quite softly, with Sharleen bringing her sensual soul to the vocals on the opening lines: “When you touch me / I feel there’s nothing you can do to tear me away / And I know that / In the past you’ve had bad luck, so I should help you stay”.
The chorus wraps around you, with a beguiling comfort as the piano is interlaced with flourishes of strings: “You’re all I’ve ever wanted / You’re all I’ve ever needed, it’s you / You’re all I’ve ever wanted, and loving you’s the right thing to do / And I’ll see it through”. Sharleen’s voice then really soars at its finest on the middle 8 when she sings “I’ll show you the lovin’ I have”.
Indeed, this feeling of intimacy is replicated in what was another stunning video. In recent years, Sharleen had managed to have all manner of leading men as her love interest in the promos for the singles – most notably of all, Love Actually’s very own Harry, aka the late great Alan Rickman, who she did a memorable and passionate tango on a petrol station forecourt with for the “In Demand” video.
Her love interest in “I’ll See It Through” was the French actor Jean Reno, of Mission: Impossible and Ronin fame, capturing Sharleen in a tight embrace with Jean whilst being depicted with both black and white angel wings. It was somewhat a fitting treatment, given some of the storylines that Love Actually did explore, such as Liam Neeson’s character Daniel, and him navigating grief over the loss of his wife.
Being already available on both a barely two month old album and a movie soundtrack should have, in theory, not dented the chances of the single so significantly. But combined with an exceptionally busy pre-Christmas release schedule including new singles that week from Christina Aguilera, Evanescence, Madonna and erm, The Cheeky Girls, there’s really no other way to explain away the #40 peak and entry of “I’ll See It Through” other than as a disaster. To put it into context, the last time a single of theirs had charted lower was when “In My Heart” scraped the bottom end of the top 75 in 1991.
And thus Mercury Records curtailed further promotion of Careful What You Wish For altogether, with the band instead returning to the studio to write and record their Red Book album, which, upon release in 2005, returned them briefly to some of their former glory with a further three top 20 hits – “Getaway”, “Can’t Resist” and “Sleep”, before they commenced an eight year hiatus. Along with those singles and “Carnival Girl”, it was tellingly absent on their Very Best Of album they released last year. A crying shame, when they more than hold their own amongst some of the more well known hits in the Texas canon.
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