Susie Vanner Announces New Album and Shares 'Nobody Does It Better'

If you're one of the many millions of Bond fans, you will know Susie Vanner. If you frequented the Northern Soul dancefloors of the 60's, you may even recognise her voice.

After all these years, the former Bond Girl who appeared in the 1977 classic The Spy Who Loved Me, will release her debut album in April 2020. As a teaser to the album, Vanner also shares her spine-tingling version of the Bond standard, Nobody Does It Better.

In These Shoes charts the stories of Susie Vanner's life through the songs that have affected her most, with effervescent and re-worked covers of songs such as Walk on the Wild Side, Cry Me A River, Tainted Love, Sway, and more.

The Northern Soul sound still has its fingerprints on Susie's updated style, with a smooth and luxurious production by Grammy Award-winning producer Kipper Eldridge. As Kipper says: "I have never worked on an album where its journey so closely charts the artist's life. Susie Vanner is a truly inspiring woman who laughs and cries without inhibition, who is strong and vulnerable and who decided to make the album of her dreams a reality without compromise."

So to trace the story of this album - the story of Susie's life in many ways - you must look back to Susie's past.

As a Bond Girl in the 1977 classic The Spy Who Loved Me (known affectionately as Log Cabin Girl), her stardom was cemented, with whirlwind promo tours and junkets - even to this day she is considered royalty in the Bond family.

The kudos this brought were film roles alongside Hollywood legends including Kirk Douglas, Tim Roth, David Niven, and Sly Stallone, and major TV parts in BBC and ITV series (including Kiss The Girls and Make Them Cry, Minder and Tales Of The Unexpected). She also had the Midas touch for brands, appearing in a slew of major TV advertisements.

Though this was not her first touch of fame - Vanner signed a record deal with RCA at the age of 19 (under the name Sue Lynne), recording a handful of singles that became Northern Soul standards including the hit Don't Pity Me. Music was always - and will always be - her first love.

Susie says: "When I was 20 I formed my own session singing group. §. Now here I am actually coming back into the music business."

It is equal parts serendipitous and an interesting stroke of fate that Susie has gone full circle, leading to a reset moment where she will now re-establish her singing career - incredibly releasing her debut album all these years later.

This element of destiny comes in through a chance meeting with renowned, Grammy Award-winning producer Kipper Eldridge at a charity dinner, who has worked with the likes of Sting and Gary Numan. She sat next to him, chatted easily and quirkily in Susie's own way that she has. Her then husband, who had been a long-time fan of her singing, placed a bid in the auction for a producing session with Eldridge and won.

This encounter then led to what would become the formation of the album project - all recorded at Mark Knopfler's (Dire Straits) studio, with the tracks all featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra recorded at Abbey Road Studios.

On the album, Kipper says: "I have never worked on an album where its journey so closely charts the artist's life. Susie Vanner is a truly inspiring woman who laughs and cries without inhibition, who is strong and vulnerable and who decided to make the album of her dreams a reality without compromise."

In These Shoes began with Cry Me A River - an important song for Susie's journey: "The lyrics of Cry Me A River were relevant because I was in pain. The lyrics reflect the way I felt I was crying a river, so that was my first song."

Once the decision was made to pour her soul into her music it became a powerful partnership with Kipper.

The next song they recorded was Corinne Bailey Rae's Like A Star. And later came her version of Walk On The Wild Side, which she encourages all of us to do. After that Nobody Does It Better as an homage to her Bond days. Other tracks include Tainted Love, Don't Know Why, Every Breath You Take, In These Shoes, Sway, Sweet Dreams and Windmills of Your Mind. In all these songs you hear a gorgeous voice that comes from the core.

A rare album that can express the real up's and down's of life lived, you could say it's an album that's been a lifetime in the making.

Track List:

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