For those of you who only know of the late Twinkle because The Smiths covered "Golden Lights", you're in for a big surprise here. Girl in a Million: The Complete Recordings collects the entirety of the recorded works of Twinkle, the singer most famous for "Terry" in the United Kingdom. That song, odd as it is, gained her some attention, as did that Smiths cover of "Golden Lights" decades later, but her subsequent singles are even better.
The late singer, born Lynn Ripley, wrote the two most well-known songs here ("Terry" and "Golden Lights") and those two numbers, dissimilar as they are, should draw a listener into this handsome set. Once past those, we get stuff like the brash and rather bold "Ain't Nobody Home But Me", where Twinkle's throaty vocals place her alongside Lulu, as does "Take Me To The Dance", a number like many here written by producer Tommy Scott. If "Terry" is the morbid cousin to Yank classic "Leader of the Pack" in some ways, the excellent "Mickey" is its more lively parallel. Produced by Mike D'Abo of Manfred Mann, the cut is a piano-anchored belter penned by Twinkle herself. The hook here is big, and Ripley's delivery should draw comparisons to Lulu once again, while the equally-bright "What Am I Doing Here" made me think of the slower "What Am I Gonna Do With You?" by Lesley Gore a tiny bit.
The material here on Girl in a Million: The Complete Recordings is surprisingly strong for an artist pegged as a one-hit wonder. If Lynn Ripley didn't get quite the fame that she deserved in her heyday, one could perhaps blame the material that felt too British (the music-hall rouser "Darby and Joan", one of Ripley's best compositions), or the fact that stuff like "The Boy of My Dreams" must have seemed a trifle generic in an era when so many, like Lulu and Petula Clark, were cranking out similar tunes. And while "A Lonely Singing Doll" shows that Twinkle was adept at taking a Gainsbourg-penned hit for France Gall and translating it into a British rocker, the elegant and beautiful "Zefferelli (AKA A Little Bit of Heaven)" from much later in Twinkle's career reveals that the singer was a supremely-talented composer. The cut is, like "Michael Hannah" penned for her husband, a downright breathtaking bit of pop glory from an era when this sort of thing could sometimes slip through and make it onto the (British) charts. There are a few other cuts produced by Mike D'Abo on this compilation ("Ladyfriend", "Jane", and "Soldier", for instance), that show Twinkle trying to shed her teenybopper image, and tackle the sort of material that Lulu or Sandie Shaw were doing in the same era. At times, Twinkle sounds a tiny bit like Mary Hopkin, but the material here is far more robust, with a far better point of comparison being Lesley Gore in the mid-Sixties.
Full of rarities, hits, and just about everything she recorded, Girl in a Million: The Complete Recordings is a superb collection, and one which should surprise as much as it pleases attentive listeners. If anything, my very narrow view of Twinkle's talents was expanded considerably by playing this set. The late singer was immensely talented, and, unlike other women in that era, capable of writing her own material and transcending the limits imposed upon her by producers at times.
Girl in a Million: The Complete Recordings is out now via Cherry Red Records.