Though I’d already had it in my head to feature Simply Red’s “Stars” as last week’s Friday Flashback, when I hit Berkeley on Wednesday to do some record-store scrounging I discovered someone had heard enough of Mick Hucknall and dumped their substantial Simply Red collection. (More likely, they made digital copies and cashed in their CDs.)

So I was able to snag the UK singles of “You Make Me Feel Brand New” and “Fake,” taken from Simply Red’s 2003’s album, Home, and featuring mixes by Love To Infinity, a club team for whom I have a weakness. (“Sunrise” was also in the bins, but I already have that Hall & Oates-sampling single.) Though I knew the Stylistics cover, I wasn’t at all familiar with “Fake.”

On Home, “Fake” plays as Simply Red’s homage to the Motown sound, but the single leads with a radio version that substitutes the original Funk Brothers-inspired rhythm for a four-on-the-floor beat with some light house-music piano and interlaced female vocals. It’s absolutely gorgeous. As I’ve now learned, Simply Red did hit #1 on the Billboard Hot Dance/Club Play chart with “Fake” on February 14, 2004, thanks to club reworks by Love To Infinity and Phunk Investigation, but neither outfit had anything to do with the remix tailored for radio. It’s this take on “Fake” that’s the real deal, the version I can’t stop playing though it’s six years old now, the one that should have been another hit for Simply Red.

Taking its cue from the song’s title, the music video for “Fake” finds Mick Hucknall touring a club in which he encounters several celebrity lookalikes, including his own:

Purchase Simply Red – “Fake” (Radio Edit) via iTunes, Amazon MP3.