Ali Campbell from UB40 chats to I Like Music

ILM: You and your brother Robin duet on the album on Devoted To You by The Everly Brothers. Why that song?

ALI: We were massive Everly Brothers fans too because my Aunty was. Aunty Chris, me mam's sister. She used to babysit for us and we'd go to her house in Telford and she had a stack of Elvis and Everly Brothers and The Beatles records that we used to listen to. And a little later than that we got into reggae. And because we were brothers, people we used to say, we were the Everly Brothers of reggae. It's better than being called the Status Quo of reggae, trust me, and that's happened to us as well.

So I thought, I've got lots of guests on my solo album, I might as well have my brother. That'll be diplomatic I thought. So we did it, but the thing is that track is such a cute and sickly melody. That's what Everly Brothers were about, that close harmony, very 50s. So when me and Rob are singing Devoted To You it was so sickly, we were in danger of becoming The Camp-bells. So when I got it into the studio, I was really flummoxed with that track, it was the hardest one to mix, because it was too sweet. The more stuff I added the sweeter it became, so I ended up stripping the backing track down to make it less sweet.
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