Here we have acclaimed actress - the very lovely Jan Graveson - with her quite simply superb 1991 baggified downtempo dance house cover of the Bacharach & David classic "Anyone Who Had A Heart". This has to be, without doubt, my favourite version of the song and it is one I can listen to on repeated play for ages (although I also like the Cilla Black version - I'm not so keen on Dionne Warwick's version no matter what she says about Cilla's!). The sound and style reminds me a bit of the equally excellent 1992 cover of another sixties hit - "The Crying Game" by Boy George which was produced by the Pet Shop Boys. Jan, for those long enough like myself to remember, released "Anyone Who Had A Heart" on the back of her very memorable role in Eastenders as Disa O'Brien - the homeless friend of runaway Diane Butcher. Disa was a classic tragi-character of it's time in an era when Eastenders was constantly on top form. Anyway, back to "Anyone Who Had A Heart"! This is quite a rare and collectible release now and is well worth having for the radio and extended versions alone. Third track "Gonna" is a decent enough housey-housey Cathy Dennis-style number co-written by Jan which sounds good enough to have been a follow-up single albeit probably a least successful one. As a b-side it makes for a very nice listen indeed and is the kind of track I can easily see making it onto retro-obscuro 90s dance compilations. All in all, it's all good stuff from a far better time (at least in retrospect) in pop music.
Jan Graveson
Anyone Who Had A Heart
EastWest
1991
32 mb
1. Anyone Who Had A Heart (7" Mix)
2. Anyone Who Had A Heart (Extended Mix)
3. Gonna
