Peter Sarstedt

Listening to Peter Sarstedt after his heyday, listeners might think he was the creation of some TV movie producer who tried to build a story around a character based on Donovan and only got it 25% right. Sarstedt recalled Donovan, and to a slighter extent such other British pop-folk singer/songwriters of the era as Al Stewart and Cat Stevens, with his lilting phrasing and earnest ambition. And if you thought Donovan's production could be overly pop-conscious, Sarstedt's arrangements were a far more determined admixture of wordy lyricism and bouncy commercialism, their brassy o...