Remembering and Celebrating Dusty

It’s the birthday today of the late, great British pop/soul vocalist Dusty Springfield (1939-1999). If still with us in this life, she would be 84 today.

Dusty’s career spanned over three decades, and included numerous hits, including “I Only Want to Be With You,” “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself,” “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” “The Look of Love,” “Son of a Preacher Man,” “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” (with the Pet Shop Boys), and “In Private.” She is widely regarded as one of greatest female vocalists of the twentieth century, with a solo career that began in 1963 and continued to 1995, four years before her death from breast cancer in 1999.

My interest in and admiration for Dusty is well documented here at The Wild Reed, most notably in Soul Deep, one of my very first posts.

Other previous posts worth investigating, especially if you’re new to Dusty, are Dusty Springfield: Queer Icon, which features an excerpt from Laurence Cole’s book, Dusty Springfield: In the Middle of Nowhere; Celebrating Dusty (2017), which features an excerpt from Patricia Juliana Smith’s insightful article on Dusty’s “camp masquerades”; Celebrating Dusty (2013), which features excerpts from Annie J. Randall’s book, Dusty!: Queen of the Postmods; Remembering Dusty, my 2009 tribute to Dusty on the tenth anniversary of her death; and Remembering Dusty, 20 Years On, my 2019 tribute on the twentieth anniversary of her death.

And, of course, off-site there’s my website dedicated to Dusty, Woman of Repute (currently only accessible through the Internet archive service, The Way Back Machine).

My website’s name is derived from Dusty’s 1990 album Reputation, and as I explain in Soul Deep, it was this album that introduced me not only to Dusty’s music but also to her life and journey – much of which resonated deeply with me. Indeed, my identification with aspects of Dusty’s journey played an important role in my coming out as a gay man.

Above: Dusty, amidst the flowing streams, standing stones and picturesque Celtic ruins of County Clare and the Galway coast for the making of the music video for “Roll Away,” a track from her last album, 1995’s A Very Fine Love. The liner notes of the 2016 2-disc expanded collector’s edition of A Very Fine Love include my reflections on this beautiful song, reflections which are also shared in the previous Wild Reed post, Time and the River.

In remembering and celebrating Dusty on the 84th anniversary of her birth, I share “Getting It Right,” a 1989 track by Dusty that’s very meaningful to me, in large part because I discern certain spiritual insights in its lyrics. These insights remind us that we are made by and from Love. Theologian Ilia Delio explains this idea in this way: “God is not a lonely deity at the top of a medieval cosmos, spinning the stars and governing the heavens; rather, God is selfless love . . . dynamic love. It is out of this love that we are and continue to be created.”

In reflecting on this spiritual truth, A Course in Miracles says: “If Love created you like Itself, this Self must be in you. And somewhere in your mind, it is there for you to find. . . . Love created you like Itself. Hear the truth about yourself in this.”

And Dusty sings this truth to us very forthrightly in “Getting It Right,” . . . You’re made of love.

From the first time I heard “Getting It Right,” it spoke to my soul of this truth about myself. It still does. And this isn’t just because of the song’s lyrics; it’s also because of the way Dusty sings these lyrics.

In her singing, I hear Dusty powerfully and beautifully inviting me (and by extension all of us) to embody Love by trusting myself enough to take the risk of being vulnerable with another.

Indeed, such trust and openness are “the secret" of “getting it right,” with “it” being the living of an authentically loving life. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have healthy boundaries or that we can never say “no.” But it does mean that we seek, as best we can, to let trust, generosity and love guide our lives rather than suspicion, doubt and fear. It’s not always easy, I know. But it’s what I try to do each and every day, and Dusty's “Getting It Right” encourages me in this.

The audio of “Getting It Right” (below) is followed by an excerpt from Soul Deep, in which I explore further the significance of this song in my journey to authenticity as a gay man.

Hey, boy, don’t be shy
Waiting all alone
Think about what you can give
Some boys never learn
That’s the way to live
And it’s the secret
To getting it right

Living carefully, always filled with doubt
Scared to make a move too soon
Just once, take a chance
He will take one too
’Cause that’s the secret
To getting it right

It’s not who loves you as how much do you love
And what’s in your heart that shows what you’re made of
You’re made of love

Hey, boy, it’s all right
Someone understands
You don’t have so far to go
Reach out for his hand
Then you’ll really know
The secret to getting it right

You’re made of love

Hey, boy, it’s all right
Someone understands
You don’t have so far to go
Reach out for his hand
Then you’ll really know
The secret to getting it right

Reach out, take his hand
Then you’ll really know
You’ll know that you’re getting it right

Yes, you’ll know that
You’re getting it right

In recognizing and resonating with Dusty’s life and music, I was experiencing what writer Charles Taylor identifies as pop music’s ability to offer “a distilled and transcendent version of experience – [one] that can seem both shared and startlingly personal.”

Indeed, when Dusty sang, Hey, boy, it’s alright / Someone understands / You don’t have so far to go . . ., I had the unnerving yet exhilarating sense that she was singing directly to me – hiding fearfully as I was, behind the heterosexual persona that my career in teaching [at the time] had forced me to create and maintain.

But now, Dusty’s “songs of experience,” as one critic labeled the music of [her 1990 album] Reputation, were pushing me to question this closeted existence of mine – to the extent that I realized that it really wasn’t worth the patience. This discernment played a fundamental role in my coming out process and my decision to relocate to the United States. Perhaps you could say that in singing along with Dusty Springfield’s soulful “songs of experience,” I not only discerned a kindred spirit, but also began finding my own soul-deep voice.

. . . Or, said another way, finding the Love within me in whose image I have been created, as have we all. I will forever be grateful to Dusty and her music for helping guide me to this Love.

For more of Dusty at The Wild Reed, see:
• Soul Deep
• Dusty Springfield: Queer Icon
• Remembering Dusty Springfield’s “Daring” 1979 Gay-Affirming Song
• Remembering Dusty, 20 Years On
• Remembering and Celebrating Dusty – 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019
• Remembering Dusty (2018)
• Celebrating Dusty (2017)
• Celebrating Dusty (2013)
• Remembering Dusty (2009)
• Remembering Dusty – 14 Years On
• Remembering Dusty – 11 Years On
• The Other “Born This Way”
• Time and the River
• Remembering a Great Soul Singer
• A Song and Challenge for 2012
• The Sound of Two Decades Colliding
• Home to Myself

See also the following Wild Reed posts:
• The Choice (and Risk) That is Love
• Love as Exploring Vulnerability
• Vulnerability Is Power
• Love as “Quest and Daring and Growth”
• A Vibrant Relationship
• Moving Among Mysteries
• “Queer Love Is My Divine Companion”
• What We Crave
• The Gravity of Love
• To Be Alive Is to Love
• Like a Sure Thing
• Intimate Soliloquies