Dina Carroll - Without Love
Dina Carroll needed a hit to get her career back on track. Her response didn’t quite work out.
Writers: Bernadette Cosgrove, Kevin Clark
Producers: Laurence Nelson, Alistair Johnson
Release date: 12th July 1999
By spring 1999, Dina Carroll’s career was in a bit of a tailspin. Her comeback double A side single of One, Two, Three/ Livin’ For The Weekend ’98 hadn’t set the charts on fire and had thus seen the release of her third album pushed back. A planned release of her cover of Dusty Springfield’s Son Of A Preacher Man in April 1999 never materialised, apparently due to the death of Dusty from breast cancer in March, though no promo releases were issued or video shot which indicated the plug may have been pulled before then.
By this point Dina was unhappy with the sound of her third album, “I just felt that the circumstances were not right and I was no longer comfortable with it. In the intervening period, Whitney Houston had released It’s Not Right [But It’s Okay] and the whole genre I was working in had moved on. I just felt that the music was wrong for the time and that the whole process had taken too long.” And thus, the album was shelved for the time being.
With a label wanting to make some money and nothing available, or at least nothing Dina was keen on available, the decision was made to fully return Dina to the dancefloor. Unlike some of the female singers who tried their hands with dance tracks in 1999 following Cher’s career re-inventing Believe, this was not unfamiliar territory for Dina.
In fact, her past three releases on Mercury had effectively been double A sides of a pop track coupled with a dance track that was remixed and serviced to clubs via Mercury’s dance imprint Manifesto. And it was through Manifesto that this new track, Without Love, would be released.
Manifesto themselves probably welcomed this move by Dina wholeheartedly as summer 1999 approached. Since the completion of the merge between Polygram (Mercury’s parent company) and Universal, and the resulting internal reshuffle they had hit a quiet patch – going from racking up 10 #1 club chart hits through 1998 to releasing nothing after February 1999 and losing promising artists like Emmie along the way.
Mercury’s MD Howard Berman, who had brought Dina over with him when he moved from A&M to Mercury, stated at the time the strategy behind this new material was to follow the same pattern that had broken Dina several years prior. “This single is on Manifesto now to make a statement of intent,” he said, “the label’s a strong name on the dancefloor and we felt we’d slipped too far into MOR”.
Dina echoed this point, stating to Smash Hits the reason for her two-year absence (clearly One, Two, Three was being skipped over) was because she had “got caught up in the ballads”.
The song itself was written by the duo who penned Jennifer Paige’s Crush. Whilst there was a version produced by Rhett Lawrence (who worked on most of Dina’s third album), the track is listed as originally being produced by Laurence Nelson and Alastair Johnson. This duo, better known as the production duo Canny, had provided the lead remix of Livin’ For The Weekend ’98.
Theirs would be one of several production attempts of the song with Todd Terry also producing a version. In the end most of these would not see the light of day (the Canny Extended Mix would make it onto promotional releases), with Manifesto settling on a new remix by Dave Sears. This Chicago based producer had provided Manifesto with a big chart hit and bigger radio hit the previous summer with his remix of Karen Ramirez’s Looking For Love.
Remixes by Tall Paul and Mood II Swing rounded out the package and just to ensure the third album sessions didn’t completely go to waste, one of the tracks intended for that album, On and On, was added to the CD and cassette as a bonus track. Curiously, despite the Chart Information Network rules of only counting sales of three formats (in this case CD1, CD2 and cassette), a fourth release (12” vinyl in Manifesto sleeve) was released – albeit with four tracks and well over 20 minutes in run time, rendering it ineligible. Dina clearly was going for extra sales from the club kids!
As the promotional wheel spun into motion, things were looking good for the reinvented Dina and the prospects of her third self-titled album finally being released. The track hit number one on the RM Club Charts and spent three weeks in the Cool Cuts Top 10 peaking at #6. A week after making it onto Radio 1’s playlist, it was promoted to their A-list and stayed on there for six weeks prior to the song’s release.
Without Love peaked at #22 on the national radio charts, gaining 834 plays that week to a combined audience of 24.18 million – presumably some double counting of audience there! Wider radio support was also there a few weeks later with a good amount of independent local radio play (at one point clocking up 986 plays in one week) as well as a Radio 2 C-listing.
MTV also got behind the track, B-listing it before promoting to their (very small) A-list for the song’s first two weeks of release (climbing as high as #6 on their charts). Added to that were performances on GMTV, Fully Booked, the Des O’Connor Show and the Pepsi Chart Show. In short, Without Love was everywhere!
Chart run: 13 > 26 > 27 > 35 > 47 > 49 > 68
With all that pre-release support, a #13 hit (31,000 first week sales) must have been disappointing for all concerned. Well, maybe not for Manifesto who broke their 1999 drought releasing both Dina and Yomanda’s Synth & Strings the same week with the latter hitting the Top 10.
Radio 1 instantly pulled the track from their playlist and a Top of The Pops performance and a couple of Radio 1 Roadshow appearances aside, promotion ended and the song settled down the charts. Local radio play did actually increase a couple of weeks after release before dying down. Dina did get to perform a few weeks later at the Wicked Women concert in Hyde Park in aid of breast cancer awareness, performing the very Dusty Springfield track she had intended to release earlier that year.
Whilst not a resounding Top 10 hit, it did at least lead to Mercury reigniting plans for Dina’s third album albeit with a little bit of remixing to take advantage of the gains made in re-establishing Dina as a dancefloor presence.
Manifesto Records
CD1 - FESCD-57
1. Without Love (Dave Sears Radio Edit)
2. On And On
3. Without Love (Mood II Swing Special Mix)
CD2 - FESDD-57
1. Without Love (Dave Sears Extended Mix)
2. Without Love (Tall Paul Remix)
3. Livin’ For The Weekend (The Space Brothers Mix)
Cassette - FESMC-57
1. Without Love (Dave Sears Radio Edit)
2. On And On
Vinyl - FESX 57
A1. Without Love (Dave Sears Extended Mix)
A2. Without Love (Mood II Swing Extended Mix)
B1. Without Love (Tall Paul Remix)
B2. Without Love (KNV Powder Vocal)
Versions:
Original (Rhett Lawrence Production)*
Canny Radio Edit*
Canny 12” Extended Mix 8:31*
Todd Terry Radio Edit*
Todd Terry Remix*
Dave Sears Radio Edit
Dave Sears Extended Mix 6:34
Mood II Swing Radio Edit*
Mood II Swing Special Mix 6:55
Mood II Swing Extended Mix 7:34
Tall Paul Remix 7:27
KNV Powder Vocal 6:33
* unreleased
Such a good song! She was stunnng in the video!
Adore this song! It’s on my running playlist as it always motivates me to keep going. It absolutely should’ve been a top 10 hit at minimum.