Ain’t No Sunshine

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

“…Women can say stuff like: “I loved him, I really really loved him. But he just left, why’d he leave like that?”

Men given the same situation usually say something like:

“I’m glad the old jive broad split, Man,”

knowing all the time that it’s really killing them inside…”

That’s how Bill Withers introduced this live performance of Ain’t No Sunshine on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test in 1972 - check it out - it’s amazing.

Ranked by Rolling Stone at #280 in its top 500 songs of all time, this track represents everything that we aspire to when we write: simple but effective melody, memorable hook and a lyric that everybody can relate to. The story goes that Bill was working making toilet seats for jumbo jets when he recorded the song and had originally intended on writing more lyrics where he sings “I know” 26 times - but deferred to the other musicians and left it the way it is.

 

Its little things like that that I wonder about - would the song have been less memorable if he had actually completed it? Who knows? When you’re performing a cover of a song that has such a unique phrase - it’s tough to do it justice without sounding a little hoaky. Kelli had been looking at a number of other covers at the time - most notably Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Taking Care of business,” there’s a break down in that track where the band start clapping and coming in with vocal harmonies on top of the vocalist’s scat of “Takin’ Care of Business” - although Kelli ultimately decided not to cover it, the idea of having the band support the vocalist - almost a capella - in the break down - really made sense.

Have a listen to Kelli’s version of Ain’t no Sunshine here and see what you think.

You might also enjoy...

• Who’s Your Daddy
• Ask Kelli
• Kelli - New Bio
• Crazy - Part 2