Lesley Gore's Blue-Eyed Soul Gem: Someplace Else Now

It's hard to overestimate the role Lesley Gore played in charting the course of popular music. Not only was she probably the biggest female teen idol of her era—with four Top Five hits before she was of legal age—but she broke out of the “girl singer” mold with “You Don’t Own Me,” the proto-feminist #2 hit that inspired generations of female singers to come, and served notice that she was much more than just a pretty face with a pretty voice (indeed; Gore ultimately became a pioneering LGBT performer).

However, despite Lesley’s lofty place in the pop music pantheon, there remain some pretty major gaps in the reissue of her repertoire on CD, notably the lone album she cut for Berry Gordy’s Motown subsidiary MoWest, Someplace Else Now. Produced by Joe Porter, this 1972 release marked Lesley’s move into a singer-songwriter mode. Gore wrote or co-wrote (with Ellen Weston or her brother Michael, with whom Lesley would later gain renewed acclaim for collaborating on the score to the hit film Fame) every song on the album. Though it failed to make a significant commercial impact at the time, Someplace Else Now has come to be regarded as a lost, blue-eyed soul gem, and it makes its worldwide CD debut on this Real Gone reissue, complete with liner notes by Joe Marchese and remastering  by Mike Milchner at SonicVision. With Lesley’s recent passing, a most timely release and one long requested by her legion of fans.

Songs:

1.   For Me

2.   The Road I Walk

3.   Out of Love

4.   She Said That

5.   Don’t Wanna Be the One

6.   Be My Life

7.   Where Do You Go (When You Get Home)

8.   What Did I Do Wrong

9.   Someplace Else Now

10. Mine

11. No Sad Songs

12. For You