Peter Sarstedt is now almost exclusively known to the general public for Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?, which kept Space Oddity off the Number 1 spot in the UK at the time and has since been given a new lease of life by being featured on the Darjeeling Limited recently. This song is fine in itself but there's more.
Though much of his output seems to exist vaguely in the shadow of Donovan with whom he shares a basic style of breathy delivery, a taste for melody and fondness for flights of fancy. He's also prone, like Donovan, to moments of high pretension. I came upon a song of his called Hemingway, which I wondered about in terms of inclusion in place of this series until I actually listened to it. It's blessed with the lines.'Hemingway and I went hunting for sharks. Just off the coast of Lorenzo Marques' , and then gets progressively worse from there musically and lyrically.
'll leave you to track that one down if you choose to. I did though also chance upon an album of his called The Lost Album by him today, recorded in 1970 but which remained unreleased until very recently which is uniformly excellent. Not just the song I've posted which I'd say is something of a lost classic but pretty much the rest of it too. Brief further research told me that Sarstedt himself is now in poor health having been diagnosed with dementia recently. I wish him well and commend you to The Lost Album. Watch the video below too. It could bring you to tears.
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