Review
Genre and Mood
The Source featuring Candi Staton, “You Got The Love”, New Voyager Radio Mix: house built around a soul and gospel voice, uplifting by nature and euphoric by design, a remix made to put a fifteen-year-old club anthem back on the radio.
Song Summary
The song began in 1986 as a soul, disco and gospel track written by Anthony B. Stephens, Arnecia Michelle Harris and John Bellamy, recorded by Candi Staton for a direct-to-video documentary about a man trying to lose weight. Its fame came later and from the clubs. This version is its third top-ten revival: in 2006 Now Voyager remixed the song again and called the result the New Voyager Mix, which Positiva released on CD on 6 February 2006. The radio edit was the first track of the UK single, ahead of the Shapeshifters’ mixes, and the record reached number 7 in the UK, number 6 in Ireland and number 8 in the Dutch Top 40.
Musical Breakdown
No source describes the New Voyager Mix section by section, and this review does not invent one.
The Voice
What every version shares is Staton’s vocal. The 2006 mix, Wikipedia notes, uses more of her lyric than the first two hit versions did.
The Radio Edit
This is the short version, about three minutes, made for radio; the UK single also carried an Extended New Voyager Mix for the clubs.
Concepts in Focus
The song’s history is a history of the remix. In the late 1980s the DJ Eren Abdullah laid Staton’s a cappella over Frankie Knuckles’ version of Jamie Principle’s house track Your Love, a bootleg made by mixing two records. John Truelove released it on his label in 1991 as The Source featuring Candi Staton, and it reached number 4. In 1997 the Now Voyager Mix reached number 3, the song’s highest position. Now Voyager was a band Truelove started in 1996.
A radio edit shortens a track for radio: here the remix is cut to around three minutes so that a club record could be played between pop songs.
The <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist credit is unusual here. Staton is not a guest on someone else’s song: the song is hers, and the record is built around her voice.
Artistic Context
Candi Staton, born in Hanceville, Alabama, in 1940, sang gospel as a girl with the Jewell Gospel Trio, became the First Lady of Southern Soul at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios, topped the US R&B chart in 1976 with Young Hearts Run Free and returned to gospel in 1982. You Got The Love became her biggest-selling record in Europe. The streaming copy named here sits on a 2008 compilation, Pure Dance Party, which adds a credit to The Rhythm Masters for Seven Music Promotions; Wikipedia names the Rhythm Masters among the remixers of the 1997 release.
Impact and Reception
The same vocal has now reached the UK top ten in three different mixes, in 1991, 1997 and 2006. Florence + the Machine took the song to number 5 in 2010, and The Retrosettes Sister Band – You Got The Love shows it surviving far from the club. Play the 2006 radio edit loud.
