After yesterday's Ty Segall/Hot Chocolate cover comparison, more material playing on the topic of who or may not be the winner in a relationship from the brilliant hip hop and jazz producer and the 70s funk and soul family group. J Dilla, who sadly died very prematurely, was a master of remixes and creating new tracks from samples, and this, from his 2006 album Donuts is a prime example, cleverly intensifying the original, but also mischievously re-titling it.
Can love really be a win-win situation? Rarely, and with another take on it, let's enjoy the fantastic bittersweet, slightly slower original from The Sylvers in 1972, a band who in a parallel universe, while gaining relative success, should have been as big as the Jackson 5. Bigger also because, while mostly a sextet, they were also from a big family of 10 siblings, and all but one performed in the group that came from Memphis, Tennessee originally, and settled in Watts, Los Angeles. Multi-instrumentalist Leon Sylvers III wrote most of the songs and produced them, and what stands here is the angelic voice of Edmund soaring above the chorus, those minor key harmonies, that superb funk backbeat and a slick, arrhythmic lyrical delivery.
The day I left you, you were full of tears
You said you'd wait for me until I returned
But now I'm back and find you still in tears.
You say the time has left another slip in
So I'm sorry girl
But only one can win your love and you must choose between the two
But only one can win your love – the thing's eating me through and through
What now my love?
Hey baby I'm not really the jealous type
But when it comes to you – I'll really put up a fight
I thought your love would leave me after the sound of another's voice
But when you tell that you love me too, sugar, you have to make a choice
So I'm sorry girl
But only one can win your love and you must choose between the two
But only one can win your love – the thing's eating me through and through
But only one can win your love – the thing's eating me through and through
But only one can win your love – the thing's eating me through and through
But only one can win your love – the thing's eating me through and through
What now my love?
But only one can win your love and you must choose between the two
But only one can win your love – the thing's eating you through and through
Girl! Girl!
Oh! Oh!
One can win, only one can win
One can win, only one can win
Girl! Girl!
One can win, only one can win
One can win, only one can win …
Oh, what now, my love?
One can win, only one can win your love
One can win, only one can win …
Girl! Girl!
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