The Sound of Love: The Very Best of Darlene Love
Click to listen to Darlene Love’s “Wait Til’ My Bobby Gets Home” and “He’s A Rebel”
In the age of girl groups, Darlene Love was a woman in charge, the exultant voice atop Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound on records often credited to others, including the Crystals (“He’s a Rebel”) and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans (“Not Too Young to Get Married”). This single disc sets those hits next to Love’s own majestic songs with Spector (“Wait Til’ My Bobby Gets Home,” the coltish delight of “A Fine, Fine Boy”) plus later Motown- inflected tracks with her group the Blossoms. A last session for Spector in 1974, “Lord, If You’re a Woman” sounds like a genuine goodbye — that voice in front of massive echo, Spector and his Wall receding into the distance.