“There are many who have laid with me, then got up and walked away from me.” Following on from Brad’s post about the Phil Spector rarities, here’s another, the amazing single he produced for Cher in 1975, A Woman’s Story.

Someone once called Cher’s 70s output “whore operas” and that’s an especially pointed way to describe A Woman’s Story. Written by Nino Tempo, April Stevens and Phil Spector, it’s the plaintive lament of “a woman who was passed around” who has now found true love in her life, and who desperately wants and needs this love. It’s a really tense, haunting, moving, gorgeous, slow-burning number, fairly unique in both Spector’s, as well as Cher’s, oeuvre. It took me years to track the 45 down (or it may have been a gift, I can’t recall) but as you can hear, it’s an absolute show stopper.

As much as I love it, I actually prefer the Marc Almond cover version from his 1986 EP,  titled A Woman’s Story. He really gives his all to this song and it’s interesting to hear his voice’s similarity to Cher’s, who I’ve noted tends rarely to go up a note, but rather down, when she sings. Both singers, Cher and Marc, do not have what we’d call “good” singing voices, but they are amongst the very finest vocalists of our time because they found a way to use their vocal shortcomings and make them work for them, incorporating their idiosyncrasies to develop instantly recognizable singing voices. Download Cher’s version here.