Labi Siffre was a West London boy but paid tribute to a beauty spot in Staffordshire on his song Cannock Chase.
This is the play-out song over the closing credits of Sentimental Value, a new film that’s a late addition to my favourites of the year. At first I thought it might be by Nick Drake, or maybe an obscure song by Paul Simon, but it’s neither – it’s by Labi Siffre.
It comes from his third album Crying, Laughing, Loving – his third – and it’s a hymn to the beauty of nature and the healing power of music. At least that’s how I interpret it.
Siffre is one of those artists whose songs sporadically flickered through my life but I don’t think I’ve ever heard this one before. I think that 1972 album spawned his first hit singles, the title track and It Must Be Love – later a much bigger hit for Madness.
Fifteen years later, prompted by a TV documentary that showed a white South African soldier shooting at black children in the street, he came out of retirement and had his biggest hit with the anti-apartheid anthem (Something Inside) So Strong
Siffre’s music has also proved fertile ground for rappers to sample: Kanye sampled another track, My Love, for his 2007 track I Wonder, and Jay-Z sampled a tune from his 1975 album Remember My Song for his 1997 track Streets Is Watching.
More famously, Eminem (and Dr Dre) borrowed the catchiest part – played by Chas & Dave – from the same song, I Got The…, for his breakthrough hit My Name Is in 1999.
A vastly underrated artist, Siffre released six albums from 1970-75 and four more from 1988-98. Born in Hammersmith, the son of an Anglo-Barbadian mother and Nigerian father, he has also published essays, a stage and television play (Deathwrite) and three volumes of poetry, often dealing with homophobia and racism.
Openly gay, he had the same partner, Peter Lloyd, from 1964 and from the 1990s they lived in a small Welsh village in a menage a trois with Rudolf van Baardwijk. Siffre and Lloyd married in one of the first single-sex weddings in the UK in 2005, and after Lloyd’s death in 2013 he married van Baardwijk, who died two years later. Siffre now lives in Spain.
A decade ago he appeared on the BBC Radio 4 series championing the life of British author Arthur Ransome, saying Swallows And Amazons Ransome’s had taught him responsibility for his own actions and a morality that influenced and shaped him throughout his life.
Apparently there was a revival of interest in his music earlier in 2025 after his 1971 song Bless This Telephone went viral online for some reason. As there may be among viewers of Sentimental Value.