Lesley Gore – Someplace Else Now (1972)

Although California Nights suggested a teen idol who was maturing – it was Someplace Else Now which showed Gore effectively breaking with her teen past. Like any number of pop artists trying to adjust after a successful string of hits, Gore was forced to find a more grown-up way of communicating even as pop music fashions shifted around her. It’s not an easy task, and it probably hindered her that she wasn’t a part of the rock and roll world or the folk world. She couldn’t redefine her personality with an acoustic guitar or with electric instruments. She would stick with the studio-orchestrated sound and try to make it with Motown’s new sophisticated label - MOWEST. There were things that worked against her – she had a much more limited range vocally than any number of female vocalists, for instance. She hadn’t really worked comfortably in a funkier setting so her fate seemed caught up in the pop machinery. It would have to be her ballads that met the pop competition head on.

What she had going for her was taste and, because she had started writing her own songs (Someplace Else Now features songs written or co-written by Gore) her fate was in her own hands. Lesley Gore consciously redefined herself on Someplace Else Now. She starts the album with "For Me" which effectively states that her own personality will dominate the record ("Look for me everywhere"). After a failed concession to Motown gospel ("The Road I Walk"), "Out of Love" and "She Said That" make Lesley’s case as singer/songwriter. Both are quasi-Gothic depictions of romantic love themes: her reemphasis on a darker quality of love-song writing would be important if she were to distance herself from the more frivolous pop formulas on her past albums. "Out of Love" is about a family that uses love as a weapon to disguise some deep problems among the family members. "She Said That" is about a suicide and there’s a strange effect in the chorus as the singer notes the suicide, but seems unmoved by it. These songs remind us that Lesley Gore’s art was always based on a certain anguished undercurrent, even as a teenager. Some of these songs on Someplace Else Now reinforce the artistic personality that Gore had already projected. There haven't been that many teen-idols who have been able to express themselves deeply within their pop/corporate framework and then be able to take this sense of style into adulthood.

Lesley Gore;s sense of style resided largely in the ability to raise most of the songs she sang up into the range of believable emotion. This had a lot to do with the taste of the Quincy Jones’ arrangements, and Gore’s ability to seemingly believe everything she sang. There was very little lapse in the emotional illusion. The best example of that on Someplace Else Now is "What Did I Do Wrong," which she sings with as much flair as her hit "You Don’t Own Me." The song ends with a very extended repetition of the chorus refrain – the line "what did I do wrong?" – and there isn’t a single second when Gore’s voice let’s you think there isn’t some emotional consequence embedded in her question.

Someplace Else Now also shows Lesley attempting to extend her string of hits on songs like "Don’t Wanna Be One," "Mine" and "Be My Life. The fact that Someplace Else Now didn’t produce a hit single would effectively tarnish her talents in the eyes of the corporation (she wouldn’t release another album until 1982); and it would tarnish her talents in the eyes of the general pop public (without a hit single the general pop public seems unable to fathom the existence of a recording they might like). Since the songs are a bit short of pop grandeur, the case can be made that the songs deserved not to hit. But in Lesley’s case it reminds us that some of her best moments have been on songs that weren’t hits, and it was on these non-hits, perhaps, that her personality most clearly stands out.

Lesley Gore’s style was based on taste and emotional honesty. Since her style coalesced just before the era of over-reaching musical achievements, she wasn't quite able to redefine herself in a way that might have been possible a few years later. But something is definitely there.

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