Fans of “Blue Valentine” — and I know there are many of us around these parts — should be tickled by this little discovery: the previously unidentified singer of “You and Me,” the obscure 1970 soul cut picked out by star Ryan Gosling for a key scene in the film, has been named as Nannie Sharpe, a then 22 year-old church choir member who recorded the demo with her brothers in a single take.
The song was never released, Sharpe was never signed and she went on to work as a mail sorter for 30 years — so no one is more surprised than her that her 40 year-old recording surfaced on a cassette-tape compilation, happened to catch the collective ear of the “Blue Valentine” team and is now garnering a kind of cult status. It’s a lovely story which you can read in detail at The Other Paper (via The Guardian), and of course, a good excuse to revisit the gorgeous, woozily yearning song:
Comments
9 responses to “The hidden voice of ‘Blue Valentine’”
That’s awesome! So were Nannie and her brother’s collectively Penny & The Quarters?
I absolutely love this song, and Blue Valentine. What a lovely combination.
Love this movie and this song so much. They really are a perfect match.
Not only reason to re-visit the song but reason to re-visit the whole movie…then again I’ll find any reason to re-visit this wonderful film.
Thanks for this post, Guy.
Great song, great film.
What a lovely post. A great film, a great song, and two of the finest young actors giving two of last year’s best performances.
This is probably the best song I heard all of last year in movies. This is why Original Song is such a flawed/incomplete category. This song is just SO PERFECT for the film that I can’t even separate the two now. A great find.
I still can’t believe that they have lost all the “big” awards last season! What a shame! Best Performances of the year!
It’s more of a shame that Gosling wasn’t even recognized by the Academy for his extraordinary work in this film.
[…] the full article from The Guardian, click here. For additional coverage, see In Contention and The Other […]