This day in music - April 26, 1966: Dusty Springfield is at No. 1 on the UK charts with You Don't Have To Say You Love Me

By Richard K. Barry


This was Dusty Springfield's only UK No. 1, but what a hit. It reached No. 4 on the US charts.

Interestingly, the song was originally written with Italian lyrics, and was introduced in 1965 at the Sanremo Festival, a popular Italian song contest. Pino Donaggio co-wrote the song with Vito Pallavicini and his team partner, Jody Miller. The song took seventh place at Sanremo and was recorded by Donaggio, reaching No. 1 in Italy in March 1965.

The Italian title was "lo che non vivo (senza te)," which translates as "I, who can't live (without you)." Despite that fact that I'm Italian on my mother's side, I'm not going to pull an Alex Trebek here. I don't speak a word of Italian, but I can type it fairly well.

Springfield heard the song in Italian, loved it, had someone write English lyrics, and the rest is history.

You may recall that Elvis had a pretty good sized hit with it, No. 11 in the US in 1970.

I'll post both versions. Both great. (You may have to click through to the YouTube site to get the Elvis version).






(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)