Sometimes a song’s so good that it doesn’t matter who covers it.
I’m not sure which is my favourite take on It Hurts So Good, though the one I first heard was Susan Cadogan’s sweet reggae take, produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.

The original, which I’d never heard til now, was sung four years earlier by the splendidly named but long forgotten Katie Love and the Four Shades of Black.

They sound as if they were a made-up group in a Seventies movie. Which is funny because the song became a US hit for Millie Jackson when she sang it in the blaxploitation film Cleopatra Jones in 1973.

It was written by Phillip Mitchell – no, not the thuggish-looking bloke from EastEnders but a much-travelled musician who worked as a songwriter for the Muscle Shoals Sound label in Alabama before moving on to Stax and Hi Records.

It was while at Muscle Shoals that he wrote this, little imagining how enduring it would prove to be after it initially flopped in the hands of Katie Love.
After being a hit for Millie Jackson and Susan Cadogan in the Seventies, it had another lease of life two decades later when Jimmy Somerville had a hit with it in 1995.

Anyway, here’s the fragrant Jamaican Ms Cadogan making her debut on Top of the Pops in April 1975… possibly under the impression that it’s Christmastime in London.