The Darlene Love Sound

There’s no approximating the Darlene Love sound but while the fates demanded (and Smigel and Gold hoped) that they could lock the legendary singer in, producers had to rely on word of mouth to find her and they had to navigate scheduling issues to make it happen.

Darlene Love (singer): First they can’t find me and then they start calling singers to find me. This happened because one of my background singers, Elaine Caswell, works with Saturday Night Live most of the time and they happened to ask her if she might get in touch with me. She called me and asked me if she could give them my number.

Scharff: They were trying to find a soundalike because they didn’t think we could get her and then she said she would do it but her schedule… she couldn’t record the week that we needed to record. Which is why we used a scratch track [for the animators].

Gold: When she walked into the studio I said, “We’re looking for a Darlene Love kind of sound. I wonder if you can help us out with that.” She’s one of a kind and the fact that she did this is amazing.

Love: I really did enjoy it when they were teaching me that stuff.

Smigel: I was obviously excited to work with Darlene Love. You can tell by the end credits — the font is enormous. Her credit is gigantic. I remember Lorne Michaels making fun of me for that. I just wanted people to know we really got Darlene Love to sing it.