‘Never Let Me Go’: An Enthusiast Songbook

In the film Never Let Me Go, starring Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield, the most treasured possession of Mulligan’s character Kathy is an old cassette called Songs After Dark by a 1950s singer called Judy Bridgewater. In particular, Kathy loves track three, a torch song called ‘Never Let Me Go’. Here’s how she describes the song in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel:

It’s slow and late night and American, and there’s a bit that keeps coming round when Judy sings, ‘Never let me go… Oh, baby, baby … Never let me go…” […] And what I’d imagine was a woman who’d been told she couldn’t have babies, who’d really, really wanted them all her life. Then there’s a sort of miracle and she has a baby, and she holds this baby very close to her and walks around singing: ‘Baby, never let me go…’ partly because she’s so happy, but also because she’s so afraid something will happen, that the baby will get ill or be taken away from her.

Judy Bridgewater is fictional, although Ishiguro intended her to be something like Julie London. The film uses a pre-existing song written by Luther Dixon, who was best known for his producing work with the Shirelles, and for co-writing the song ‘Sixteen Candles’. It’s performed by Canadian jazz singer Jane Monheit.

But that’s not the only song called ‘Never Let Me Go’. Perhaps Kathy would have grabbed her mates and, y’know, run away, if the filmmakers had used this feisty number!

The Black Sorrows are a loose coalition of Australian musicians under the leadership of Joe Camilleri. However, they developed an identifiable sound while Vika and Linda Bull were backing vocalists in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Reaching a chart position of 30 in April 1991, ‘Never Let Me Go’ is one of several Black Sorrows songs that cracked the top 40 – the others include ‘Chained To The Wheel’ and ‘Harley and Rose’.

This is probably the definitive ‘Never Let Me Go’. Born John Alexander, Johnny Ace was a major R&B star of the mid-1950s, scoring eight hits in a row and being named Most Programmed Artist of 1954 in a US national DJ poll. He died on Christmas Day of that year backstage at a gig in Houston, after playing with a loaded gun and accidentally shooting himself in the head. He was just 25.

Luther Vandross recorded this as the title track for his 1993 soul covers album, and Curtis Mayfield did a doo-wop version. Joan Baez and Bob Dylan did a live version on the Rolling Thunder Revue Tour in 1975.

Family Force 5, in the alarming words of their Wikipedia entry, are “a Christian crunk rock band from Atlanta, Georgia”. But what they really play is more like crabcore. Solomon, Joshua and Jacob Olds are second-generation Christian rockers, but their songs don’t usually have overt religious themes.

‘Never Let Me Go’ appears on their 2006 debut album, Business Up Front/Party In The Back. Lyrically, it is quite appropriate to a film about young people facing premature harvest of their vital organs: “Time don’t faze me/Not a bit/’Cos I give mine to you/All of it”. As far as electroscreamocrunk goes, it’s really quite decent. But perhaps it lacks the film’s requisite elegiac tone.

Speaking of Christian music, this is by Hillsong United, the house band at Hillsong Church, and appears on their 2007 album All Of The Above, which ended up reaching number six on the ARIA albums chart. It was written by the bandleader Joel Houston (now the church’s creative director), who also sings. Musically, it’s actually a pretty solid little power ballad, and it’s intriguing to think about how the emotional catharsis of this genre intersects with the spiritual expression enabled by ‘rock worship’ music. Because it’s actually God never letting you go.

Stacey Kent could quite plausibly have been Judy Bridgewater. The US-born, UK-residing jazz singer has actually worked with Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote the liner notes to her 2003 album In Love Again, and co-wrote four songs on her 2007 album Breakfast on the Morning Tram… the same album on which this song appears.

Kent’s version of ‘Never Let Me Go’ is by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, who wrote ‘Que Sera Sera’, ‘Mona Lisa’ and the Christmas song ‘Silver Bells’. The three-time Academy Award for Best Song winners penned it in 1956 for the film The Scarlet Hour. It’s since become a jazz standard and has been covered by pianists Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, and by singer Dinah Washington.

Oh dear. This noodly effort is distressingly reminiscent of the kind of CD Bono might put on during sex. It’s from the soundtrack of Wim Wenders’ pretentious 2000 film The Million Dollar Hotel, based on a concept by Bono himself and starring Milla Jovovich, Jeremy Davies, Jimmy Smits, Tim Roth and Mel Gibson, who said of the film, “I thought it was as boring as a dog’s ass.”

This slow jam comes courtesy of New Ridaz, a Latin-rap group that rose from the ashes of Arizona Latin-rap posse NB Ridaz in 2006. Singer Angelina had already had some success with Latin dance-pop in the ’90s. This song is actually called ‘Never Let You Go’, and appears on the group’s self-titled debut album.

It’s at times like this you really appreciate John Oates, because without him, Daryl Hall makes songs that sound like outtakes from Londonbeat’s ‘I’ve Been Thinking About You’ sessions. It appears on Hall’s 1996 album Can’t Stop Dreaming. This song makes me picture a darkened bedroom whose window is open to the warm night, muslin curtains fluttering sensuously in a slight breeze. Two Cosmopolitans are sweating on a tray on the bedside table, and the satin sheets are drawn back invitingly.

This is a brand spanking new song… by the Human League! Yep, Phil Oakey, Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall are still together and releasing albums; ‘Never Let Me Go’ is the second single from Credo, which came out in March 2011. It’s a shame they had to AutoTune it up the wazoo so they sound more like the Pet Shop Boys, and it doesn’t make the most of Oakey’s distinctive vocals. But still, not bad for a band that’s been together as long as I’ve been alive. They won’t be letting go of each other any time soon.

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