15 Unforgettable Stock Aitken Waterman Singles

By Matt Dunn /

12. The Love I Lost - West End featuring Sybil

Released: January 1993. UK Chart Peak: #3. Oz Chart Peak: N/A. US Chart Peak: #90. By 1993 it was more a case of The Miss Factory than The Hit Factory. The 'SAW sound' was old, Kylie & Jason had deserted and Stock Waterman singles were no longer guaranteed a chart position. To save themselves, they needed to embrace the 90s dance sound and add a name with some credibility. They came up trumps with Sybil, an established mid-tempo soul diva with a big voice and street cred in spades. Her fans had been horrified when she moved to PWL in 1990. Initially it was only meant to be a distribution deal but, almost inevitably, she ended up with SAW-produced tracks. With West End, Stock Waterman changed the pace up a notch or two with The Love I Lost. The music video was a veritable celebration of the early-90s: muted primary colours, silhouetted dancers in silly hats spinning and flailing their arms about, flares and big collars everywhere and lots of classic Sybil moves - sideways glances, eyes up to the sky, shrugging shoulders, hands and arms gesticulating wildly and topped with a clap, plus that funky neck thing she always did. The Love I Lost was another PWL cover that out-performed the original in the UK. The 1974 disco version had only reached #21, so the West End treatment paid off. It was certainly the reversal of fortune that Stock Waterman needed and, on a roll, they reverted to type and put Sybil back in the Top 5 a few months later with a song that sounded almost exactly the same. Nobody seemed to mind.