Gabrielle, "Every Little Teardrop" (2007)

The new Gabrielle album, Always, is really quite great, and certainly her best produced. The first single from it is "Why," featuring Paul Smeller, and it stormed into the UK charts at #42.

This is absurd. There are thirteen tracks on the album; eight of them are better than "Why," and even after we discount those that may not work as lead singles (ballads, growers, etc), we still have approximately four or five that could have kicked off the marketing campaign less disastrously.

I suppose I can at least understand why my absolute favorite track wasn't picked as the first single. "Every Little Teardrop" is tremendous, featuring a beautifully emotional string arrangement that reinforces every word that Gabrielle sings in the chorus. But unfortunately, that arrangement is likely to remind listeners of Lenny Kravitz's "It Ain't Over Till It's Over" -- which would be fine, except that Mutya Buena sampled it not five months ago. I would imagine work on "Every Little Teardrop" started before "Real Girl" surfaced, so it's incredibly bad luck for Gabrielle that she kind of got scooped (by something inferior, no less).

Sigh. What a pity. The cover for a "Every Little Teardrop" single would even have designed itself:


Yes, the sleeve can also double as my TICKET TO HELL.