The S.O.S. Band feat. Mary Davis - Just Be Good To Me (Thompson & Folks remix--Cold Duck re-edit)

I have long felt that "Just Be Good To Me" is the single most intense love song ever written. From On The Rise, released in 1983, "Just Be Good To Me" was a major post-disco comeback hit for the band, helping to establish Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (formerly of The Time) as major producers. With vocalist Mary Davis, Jam and Lewis create in this song a vivid, horrifying and authentic depiction of romantic obsession, encompassing all the blind self-injury and veiled threats.

The sax solo itself here becomes for me a representation of the cognitive dissonance such obsession brings, as you and your friends agree that girl/guy is bad news, but you keep going back again, and again, and again ... all the while crying "Just Be Good To Me." I wish some guy like, oh, Prince (perhaps in an ironic gesture to his former bandmates) might pour his heart into a cover which would invert the gender in the lyrics of the original.

Anyway, I actually think the LP version is better than those on the 12" single of "Just Be Good To Me" (which I use here--originally remixed by Reggie Thompson & Scott Folks). However, while working on my remix of The xx's "Teardrops," I rediscovered the joys of the dub. Like most vinyl singles, the dub version of "Just Be Good To Me" was mastered quite differently from the vocal, so in this mix I had to play with compression and--conversely--widening a great deal.