"Because I was meant to sing:" Dusty Springfield's Life and Legacy as Art
Creators: name: Huffine, Meredith Anne
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2022

description: This thesis is an in-depth look at British pop star Dusty Springfield’s life and afterlife, audiovisual recordings, and cultural impact in both the United States and the United Kingdom. With a career spanning over 30 years, her legacy as one of the greatest and most emotionally affecting interpreters of song ever is both well-deserved and well-documented.

In light of this assessment, the focus of the thesis is two-fold. Breaking out as a solo artist in 1963, Springfield fought for the right to do things her way in the sexist world of the music industry. Therefore, the first part of the thesis focuses on her career and work throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, looking at this period of her life from a feminist perspective rooted in gender studies. It also considers the impact Springfield had on not only future British female artists who rose to fame after her 1999 passing, such as Adele and Amy Winehouse, but also other women who were working simultaneously with her in the business, such as Carole King, Melissa Manchester, and Lesley Gore.

The second part of the thesis looks at Springfield’s adored and revered position in the LGBT+ community. Springfield never officially identified or labeled herself as belonging to any distinct sexuality. However, this public ambivalence towards heteronormative expectations for women is just one of the many facets of Springfield which has endeared her to those in the LGBT+ community, continuing even decades after her death. Her working relationship with LGBT+ songwriters and artists, and the nuances of her recordings of their songs, is analyzed as well. It also explores her relationship with Susan Sontag’s notion of “camp,” and how the trifecta of her extravagant outer appearance, richly expressive, honest readings of songs, and warm, loving personality resonated especially deeply amongst the LGBT+ members of her audience. Finally, it examines how Dusty Springfield’s and k.d. lang’s careers mirror each other as women determined to break away from heteronormative expectations in their respective genres of pop and country. 

To close, the thesis’s coda is a look at cultural appropriation and appreciation, and how Springfield’s positionality as a white, English woman whose repertoire included many songs and sonic landscapes which originated in the African American community afforded her, and not her African American counterparts, certain privileges. Springfield’s anti-racist work, particularly her 1964 protest of South African apartheid, as well as her consistent support of Black artists throughout her career—most notably seen in her work to help introduce Motown to Britain and Europe at large—is acknowledged. Comments made by Black artists who worked alongside Springfield, such as Mary Wells and Doris Troy, about the artist and her treatment of their music, are also examined. Finally, the coda dissects the roles that white privilege and misogynoir have played in the way that both Dusty Springfield’s and Dionne Warwick’s careers and legacies are remembered.