Sugar Baby Love

"Sugar Baby Love", recorded in autumn 1973^[1] and released in January 1974, is a bubblegum pop song, and the debut single of the Rubettes. Written by Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington and produced by Wayne Bickerton, engineered by John Mackswith at Lansdowne Recording Studios, "Sugar Baby Love" was the band's one and only number one single in the UK, spending four weeks at the top of the chart in May 1974.

Recording details

Bickerton and Waddington had been writing songs together since they were both members of the Pete Best Four in Liverpool in the early 1960s. Their biggest success had been writing "Nothing but a Heartache", a US hit for The Flirtations in 1968. In the early 1970s, they came up with the idea for a rock 'n' roll musical.^[2] They co-wrote and produced a demonstration recording of "Sugar Baby Love", originally intending to submit it for the Eurovision Song Contest but instead offering it to Showaddywaddy, who turned it down.^[3] It has also been suggested that the song was originally offered to former Move singer Carl Wayne, but he also turned it down. They then offered it to the demo musicians, provided that they would become an actual group. The musicians agreed, became The Rubettes, and "Sugar Baby Love" became a UK #1 hit in 1974, also reaching #37 in the US charts. It also reached #1 in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Australia^[4], and #2 in South Africa.

Bickerton said:

"We had Paul DaVinci singing in that incredibly high falsetto voice and then a vocal group sings 'Bop-shu-waddy' over and over for about 3 minutes. Gerry Shury, who did the string arrangements, said, 'This is not going to work: you can't have a vocal group singing 'Bop-shu-waddy' non stop.' A lot of people said the same thing to us and the more determined I became to release it. The record was dormant for 6 or 7 weeks and then we got a break on Top of the Pops and it took off like a rocket and sold 6 million copies worldwide. Gerry said to me, 'I'm keeping my mouth shut and will concentrate on conducting the strings.'"^[5]

Later uses

In 2006, the song was used in the French-based AIDES campaign for safe sex. The 3 minute video, directed by Wilfrid Brimo, was awarded a Silver Lion prize at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in June 2006.^[6]

The song was covered in Japanese by Wink in 1988 and Yoko Ishida in 2001, the latter for the anime series A Little Snow Fairy Sugar; an English version by Ishida also appeared as a bonus track on the U.S. version of her CD "Sweets".

The song was covered by Bulgarian vocal quartet Tonica in 1974. The cover, titled "Svetlina(Light)", was the B-side to Tonica's first single.

The song was used in the beginning of the 1994 Australian movie Muriel's Wedding. It has also been used as an opening title for the Greek humour / satire show Radio Arvyla.

The song was also used in the beginning of the 2005 Irish film Breakfast on Pluto.

References