Darlene Love Doc Traces Spector's Erasure and Her Triumph — SkimNews
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- Darlene Love sang lead on "He's a Rebel" (1962) and "He's Sure the Boy I Love" but was credited as the Crystals — a scheme the reviewer identifies as Spector's design to withhold royalties and make himself the star.
- Phil Spector's "Phil Spector Christmas Album," which credited Love on "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," was released Nov. 22, 1963 — the day JFK was shot — and Spector suppressed distribution, keeping her name lost until Apple Records reissued it in 1972.
- Love was originally set to record "River Deep, Mountain High" before Spector switched to Tina Turner; the documentary presents the theory that Turner's R&B grit made it a commercial flop, ending Spector's reign — while Love's smoother pop-soul croon might have made it a hit.
- David Letterman featured Love singing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" on his late-night show annually starting in 1986, an annual ritual the review credits with relaunching her career after years of cleaning houses.
- Love gave the Oscar speech for Morgan Neville's "20 Feet from Stardom" when it won Best Documentary, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.
- The documentary features the 85-year-old Love recording updated renditions of her key songs with Paul Shaffer at the Power Station; the reviewer describes her voice as "extraordinary," with its force and quality "undimmed."
Why it matters: The documentary reframes a half-century of pop music history by centering the voice that defined Spector's Wall of Sound but was systematically scrubbed from the credits — and the review positions Love's career as a singular case of erasure coexisting with stardom, not a footnote to someone else's legend.
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