The Song That Turned a 17-Year-Old Girl Into a Superstar

London, 1964.

Sandie Shaw was only 17.

She was young, relatively unknown, and still at the very beginning of what would become an extraordinary career.

Then a song arrived from America.

It had already been recorded by American singer Lou Johnson, but it hadn't become a huge hit. His version reached only No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100.

But Sandie's manager, Eve Taylor, heard something in it.

Taylor had been travelling in America looking for material for her new discovery.

And she came back with a song written by one of the greatest songwriting partnerships of the era:

Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

The song was (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me.

It had originally existed as a Dionne Warwick demo in 1963, before Lou Johnson became the first artist to release it as a charting single.

Now it was about to become Sandie Shaw's song.

And the timing was almost perfect.

British pop music was exploding.

The Beatles had changed the atmosphere.

Young singers were suddenly becoming stars.

And Sandie Shaw had something distinctive that separated her from many of her contemporaries.

She sang with an almost effortless coolness.

She was also famous for performing barefoot — a visual image that would become part of her identity. Her official biography describes her as beginning her international recording career at 17 and scoring her first worldwide No. 1 with this song.

The record was released in September 1964.

And it moved incredibly quickly.

During its first week, the single reportedly sold around 65,000 copies.

Then the chart began to climb.

No. 31.

No. 11.

And then—

No. 1.

According to the Official Charts Company, the record entered the UK chart in October 1964, reached the summit and remained there for three weeks.

For Sandie Shaw, everything had changed.

She was no longer simply a promising young singer.

She was a star.

And there is something fascinating about the song itself.

The music sounds bright.

The rhythm is light.

The arrangement has that unmistakable mid-1960s elegance.

But the story in the lyrics is actually sad.

A woman is walking through familiar streets, remembering someone she has lost.

The places they visited together are still there.

The cafés are still there.

The streets are still there.

But the person is gone.

And everywhere she goes, something reminds her.

That's the emotional trick of the song.

It sounds almost cheerful while describing the inability to escape a memory.

The past is everywhere.

You can leave the relationship.

But you can't necessarily leave the memories behind.

And Sandie's youthful voice makes that contrast even more striking.

She doesn't sound devastated.

She sounds almost conversational.

That makes the sadness feel more intimate.

The record also carried an interesting piece of history.

Sandie Shaw wasn't the first person to record the song.

Dionne Warwick had already made a demo.

Lou Johnson had released his version.

Yet neither had produced the British phenomenon that Shaw created.

Her recording became the definitive 1964 British version, reaching No. 1 in the UK, Canada and South Africa. It also reached No. 16 in Australia and No. 52 in America.

And the success was only beginning.

Shaw would go on to have several more major British hits.

In 1965, she scored another UK No. 1 with “Long Live Love.”

Then, in 1967, she would win the Eurovision Song Contest with “Puppet on a String.” Her official timeline notes that by the end of the 1960s she had accumulated more than 20 UK Top 40 hits.

But it all traces back to that moment in 1964.

A 17-year-old singer.

A song discovered in America.

A rush release.

And a record that suddenly seemed to be everywhere.

There is another reason this recording has survived.

The song itself has an extraordinary afterlife.

Different generations rediscovered it.

Dionne Warwick recorded it again.

R.B. Greaves later had a US hit with it.

And in 1983, synth-pop duo Naked Eyes turned it into another international hit, taking their version into the US Top 10.

But before all those later versions existed, there was Sandie Shaw.