Best of My Love by Ella Eyre

Fiat 500 (Courtesy Orangewheels.co.uk)

FUNKY DIVAS
If proof be needed that it is possible to change deeply held views over a period of thirty years, I am a living example. Had someone said to me, in the mid-seventies, when I was listening to Black Sabbath and Judus Priest, ‘In thirty years’ time, you will like Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and Earth, Wind & Fire,’ I would have laughed in their face. But, the suggestion is not now as ridiculous as it seemed. What prompts me to say this is the current Fiat 500 TV advertisement, featuring British soul starlet Ella Eyre‘s cover of Best of My Love. The song was originally a disco-inspired hit by female group The Emotions, taken as a single from their album Rejoice in 1977. If the arrangement sounds a bit like Earth, Wind and Fire, it is because it was written by two key members of the band, Maurice White and Al McKay. Earth, Wind & Fire would later team up with The Emotions for the 1979 hit Boogie Wonderland, immortalised in a colourful effervescent video of both groups sharing a live stage. I remember a young workmate in the late seventies enthusing over the video, the morning after TOTP, and saying how brilliant he thought the performance. At the time I was thinking, ‘No, it isn’t’, but now I see it differently and can understand his excitement. If I could return in a time machine, I would say, ‘Yes, it is a great track and it will stand the test of time.’

SOUND ADVICE
Novelist Jackie Collins was the guest on BBC1’s The One Show, a teatime magazine programme. When asked by host Matt Baker for advice to give aspiring writers, she said, ‘Sit down and write. If you write one page a day you will have a book. It may not be a very good book, but it will be a book.’ This has inspired me to try to write one post a day for my blog.

Written 07.09.15/Posted 10.09.15