Do You Really Want Love

“Do You Really Want Love?” opens Thirsty with Janice Dempsey co-writing alongside Bruce Purse, produced by Paul Laurence, who also plays keyboards and synthesizer on the track. Laurence isn’t a name chosen at random for this session: he’s the producer/songwriter who discovered Freddie Jackson, writing and producing Jackson’s six-week Number 1 “Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake)” and steering his entire Capitol Records debut. Dempsey herself went on to contribute to Jackson’s own 1990 album Do Me Again - meaning she and Laurence were circling the same Freddie Jackson orbit, from opposite sides of the credits sheet, in the very same year.

Dempsey sings her own backing vocals throughout Thirsty, giving “Do You Really Want Love?” the same layered, self-harmonizing sound heard across the rest of the album. Epic also issued an extended 12" mix remixed by Goh Hotoda, a go-to remixer for some of the era’s biggest R&B and pop records - a sign of how much confidence the label had in the single. It’s the archive’s clearest showcase of Dempsey the vocalist, even as her deeper influence on the era ran through the credits of other artists’ records as much as her own.