Girl Don't Come

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When a song fires my soul, I’ll usually sit down and work out how to play it. If it’s interesting, or simply fun to play, I might then proceed to trials of arrangement for guitar and vocal, as though I was preparing for a solo live performance.

Apart from the simple benefits of practice, practice, practice, this arranging process can often reveal the particular songwriter’s economy in their craft, as well as hitherto hidden connections between the words, the melody and the accompaniment.

This song came on the radio the other day - so gorgeous, I hadn’t heard it in years. That warm buttery horn intro just kills me. One thing immediately struck me, I don’t think it had registered before - Sandie Shaw’s vocal vibrato.


“Girl Don’t Come” was a hit for Sandie Shaw in 1964/65. Only a few months earlier she’d had a massive hit around the world with her version of the Bacharach-David tune “(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me”.

Sandie possessed a breathy, vulnerable voice with a killer vibrato - just listen to how she finishes the lines in the verses of the original. Smart and versatile, she recorded whole albums in French and Italian.

She was adored by the Smiths - her song “Heaven Knows I’m Missing Him Now” later inspired one of theirs, and for a short time in the mid-80s she even fronted the band, who promoted and encouraged her comeback, with Morrissey happily stepping aside while she sang “Hand In Glove”.

When I sat down to learn this tune I was delighted to find it adapted well to a rather minimalist post-punk arrangement: just 1 vocal, 1 guitar, and drums, live take, no tricks!

I had to transpose up from the original key of A minor to C# minor, which made the guitar-playing much trickier but at least I could manage to sing it! Alas, not with her killer vibrato …

I shot a few extra angles to keep the momentum up, and given that she is a such an icon, I thought I’d better dress up a bit. (I could be wrong, but I think I may play and sing better when wearing a tuxedo).

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