Lightning strikes again for Leo at the disco

I could tell you about all the thrusting young tyros for next year: the electro-organ grinder duo from Arbroath, the 15-year-old nu-prog rock sensation from Dunstable etc. But no, the tip for the top for 2006 can only be Leo Sayer.

I can even make this quite specific: Leo Sayer will be Number One on February 12th. A vamped-up Greatest Hits collection will install itself in the album charts following this success, and the obligatory tour will wend its way to Dublin sometime by next summer. I know he looks like something that's usually found hanging from the back window of a car, but that's not the point.

This all begins back in 1977 when our Leo made an unwise stab at the disco market. The Bee Gees had sold shedloads of records on the back of their involvement with Saturday Night Fever, and Leo (always one to spot a trend just as it's a bit too late) recorded a disco ditty called Thunder In My Heart. It didn't do much for him; in fact, it was one of his poorest-selling records and it seemed to precipitate his slow exit from the music world.

Unfortunately, when people think about Leo Sayer, they get stuck on that Chris de Burgh-like song of his, When I Need You, which isn't really representative of his work. Before he started singing his own material, he was a Tin Pan Alley sort of songwriter. So impressive was he that when The Who's Roger Daltrey decided to record a solo album (1973's Daltrey) he enlisted Leo to write most of it for him.

It was a Sayer composition - the excellent Giving It All Away - which gave Daltrey his biggest ever solo success. On his own solo album, Silverbird, Sayer, as a reviewer has noted, "created a dark aura of irony, isolation, vulnerability and emotional depth - his songs are dark, strange, disturbing and ultimately captivating".

Unfortunately, for every Giving It All Away (and Sayer's version is better than Daltrey's) there was dreadful muck such as More Than I Can Say. Forward to Thunder In My Heart, and Sayer is not just running after the disco wagon, but also trying to instil some Jim Steinman/Meat Loaf emotional weightiness into the song.

A DJ browsing in a secondhand shop in Los Angeles last year picked up a copy of Thunder In My Heart and was very, very surprised by it. "It absolutely blew me away" says DJ Meck. "The production values were just absolutely awesome, and lyrically it's so heartfelt and angst-ridden."

Meck has just brought out his remix of the song, imaginatively titled Thunder In My Heart Again. Pete Tong, who is Mr Dance Music for a lot of people, loves the track and has been giving it heavy rotation on his show. Hippy-dippy indie chick Jo Whiley can't get enough of it and plays it twice an hour on her show.

Sayer knows about Meck's remix (he had to give his permission), but because he lives somewhere in Australia, he can't be contacted that easily. "He left Britain and I think he felt a bit of an outsider, a bit shunned by the record industry" says Meck. "When I originally talked to him he seemed excited that someone in the world of dance had taken on one of his records. But I don't think he knows how well the record is doing and how it has really exploded on the dance scene."

Phone home Leo, your revival has started without you. And best to ditch the Kevin Keegan perm before you arrive back.

Thunder In My Heart Again by DJ Meck will be on the Miami Connection label