Meanwhile, Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon prefers Streisand. ”I’ve no confidence in my own voice I only sing because I write, so I wouldn’t seek to put myself forward,” he says modestly. ”But it would have to be Barbra. I so love her voice, although I don’t know exactly why. Trends just come and go, and she passes through them. And, while I know she could ask anybody in the world, I’d like to be the person who brought her something different …”
Claiming to have written a drawerful of would-be Streisand songs, he unveils the demo of one conceived playfully as a Streisand/McAloon duet.
”It’s part Pepsi commercial, part ‘All You Need Is Love’,” McAloon says of ”Let’s Change the World With Music”. ”It expresses hope and futility at the same time. ‘Barbra, do you think that we can change the world with music?’ it begins. ‘It’s a beautiful ambition/But our only ammunition is a bunch of do-re-mi’s.”’
And, while he dreams of the day when, on cue, his chosen diva responds with: ”Patrick, you’re forgetting that the heart responds to music/It’s not a foolish notion/It’s not logic but emotion that compels the heart to act,” other British voices harbour parallel dreams.