Written by: Rebecca Ferguson and Eg White Produced by: Eg White Album: Heaven UK release: November 2011 UK chart peak: 10
Fun story: I interviewed Rebecca Ferguson back in 2011, just a couple of hours after the video for Nothing’s Real But Love debuted. If I remember rightly, she still hadn’t seen the finished edit at that point, so I sat there and watched it with her and her lovely publicist. To quote Notting Hill, surreal but nice.
Anyway R-Fergz is one of my absolute fave artists of the decade: all three of her original studio albums have been amazing, especially Heaven – from which NRBL was the lead single – and I really hope she’s back with more at some point.
I loved her on X Factor in 2010, and this song fits her like a glove (obviously; she wrote it). The lyrics, production and vocal delivery all help to prevent the ‘love’s what it’s all about, guys!’ message from sounding trite, and this should have become an iconic classic of Adele/Sandé proportions.
I’ll be writing about my favourite 100 pop songs of the decade; one a day for the last 100 days of 2019. They’re in no particular order, except the Top 10 – which will (obviously) come in late December.
