I Listen to All The Music

In which I listen to every song that has entered the UK charts' top 10, one week at a time. The good. The bad. The terrible. The weird. You name it, I will listen to it. This is not a sensible way to listen to music.

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 23rd April

Aww yeah! It's been way too long since we've had a Beatles hit, and I, for one, am ready. We've not got that many more after this year, after all, so I kind of feel like I've got to enjoy them as and when they come up...

Get Back - The Beatles with Billy Preston (peaked at Number 1)

It helps that this one's a banger. I knew it for years before I ever realised it was a Beatles track, and in retrospect, I think that's maybe because it does sound quite different to their usual fare. Perhaps that's down to the addition of Billy Preston, a mostly R&B and funk artist from the US who plays keys on this one. But then, Billy had been around for a while at this point. A friend of the Beatles from their 1962 Hamburg days, he almost joined the band early doors, and stayed associated with them in the years since. He was about for many of the Get Back album's sessions and later ended up playing as a session musician on a few tracks on Abbey Road, too. The only reason he gets the extra credit here is because his keyboard part's particularly prominent, to the point where the Beatles only thought it fair to credit him properly.

So, Billy's not the reason this track sounds different. But he sure contributes, delivering up something very stylish and bluesy. Add in a chugging bassline and some nasal, wailing, occasionally snarling vocals from Paul, a bit of back and forth between John and George on lead and rhythm guitar respectively, a steady shuffling bit of drumming from Ringo, and you've got the recipe for a pretty cool blues rocker, something hard, heavy and driving, straight out of the rock and roll days. To my ears it's always sounded properly American, just from the sound of it, the voice that Paul's putting on.

And then there are the lyrics, which are also notionally quite American, all about two protagonists, Jojo and Loretta. What's actually going on with them is quite mysterious. We learn that Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn't last. He apparently left his home in Tucson, Arizona, for California at some point for pastures new. Loretta, meanwhile, has something entirely different going on, as we learn that sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman, but she was another man / All the girls around her said she's got it coming, but she gets it while she can. From a modern perspective, it would be real easy to try and reach for some sort of trans reading of this one. But honestly, I have no idea if that was on the Beatles' radar. Whatever the case, both Jojo and Loretta are clearly crossed some sort of line, left one life behind for another. And the reaction here is the Beatles encouraging them, in the chorus and in a series of spoken ad-libs, to get back to where you once belonged, and to go home.

Which, on the one hand, could be read straight as the Beatles literally telling them that. But Paul's also gone on record saying that the song was inspired by Enoch Powell's infamously racist Rivers of Blood speech, which was given by the then Shadow Secretary for Defence in opposition to the Race Relations Bill, which sought to make it illegal to refuse housing, employment or services to somebody on a racial basis. Enoch was against the bill, and more broadly against the rising rates of immigration to the UK from the various Commonwealth nations, and he would surely also be pro telling people to get back home. So it also makes sense that this song could be read ironically, the Beatles parroting racists' words back at them, but with the twist that it's at least implied that Loretta and Jojo can't go back, don't really belong in their old lives any more. It's where they "once" belonged, not where they actually fit now.

Or perhaps I'm reading too much into what's best read as just a jam sesh, the Beatles playing about with words and sounds and turns of phrase in the same way they always have done, without it needing to necessarily have any deeper meaning. There are a bunch of moments on this one where you can kind of hear Paul laughing through what he's singing, which would kind of support this interpretation, that this is just the Beatles mucking around and having fun. If you get the album version, you even get a few moments of John and Paul's studio chatter, doing a silly take, fiddling around with their guitars, laughing at each other. So you know. Perhaps it's an anti-racist statement. But perhaps it's also just four lads (and their American friend) having a lark. I do feel like with the Beatles it is often both.

Come Back and Shake Me - Clodagh Rodgers (3)

Is there a less showbiz name than "Clodagh Rodgers" ? I love it, but it really doesn't sound "glam" in the way that you'd expect from a stage name nowadays, it definitely doesn't roll off the tongue, and it's not entirely clear how you pronounce it unless you know some Clodaghs. But there you go. Clodagh was despite this a bit of a household name, by 1969. Two years from now she'll even go on to represent the UK at Eurovision.

Which feels about right, she's got a very Eurovision vibe. By which I mean, she's a peddler of the finest cheese. From the opening moments of this one, there's a camp bubbliness, Clodagh entreating her love to come back and shake me, take me in your arms / Squeeze me, please me, baby, baby / Shake me, make me yours again / Hug me, bug me, be my friend. Which is fun. There's a slight cheekiness to it, an innuendo. But it's all very innocently done, it's not like there's anything downright filthy going on, and it's pulled off in such a bright, bouncy way that it's hard to really object.

I do then like what happens in the verse, as we cut away from the full, pop-perfect, polished chorus to something that's... well, I can't really describe it all that well, except that the audio quality changes entirely, as we hit the verse and it's Clodagh and a bass guitar, plus some light percussion, singing about how my sleeves are all torn, my buttons are loose / My makeup's starting to fade away. She's been a mess since her lover left, is the idea. And as if to underscore her loneliness, all of the backing singers have faded away, leaving us with Clodagh singing all alone in almost a whispery voice, very breathy. It's clear, but like she's singing right up close to the microphone, her voice flattened and compressed slightly.

Factor in Clodagh's deadpan, detached delivery, and the dreaminess of the do-do-doo backing vocals once they come back in, plus the catchy, monosyllabic punchiness of the shake me, take me / squeeze me, please me verbiage, and this song actually reminds me of nothing more than Lovefool by the Cardigans, a song I do really like, with its similarly flat, love me, love me, say that you love me. It's a sound that I didn't expect to hear at all back in 1969. But there you go. Kind of makes you wonder if a cover of Come Back and Shake Me might have been a hit, had some 90s indie pop darlings stumbled across it and decided to give it a whirl...

I fully expected Clodagh to be a bit of a throwaway track, this week, so I was pleasantly surprised by how good Come Back and Shake Me sounded. I do also really now want to hear what a 90s power pop version might sound like, I suspect it would slap. And then you've got the Beatles, with what I still think's a very atypical track for them, but one that's just dripping in fun, quotable lines and memorable turns of phrase that might be meaningless, but sure are catchy anyway.

Favourite song of the bunch: Get Back

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 18th April

A song I know, but a version I very much do not...

The Windmills of Your Mind - Noel Harrison (peaked at Number 8)

I know this one from Dusty Springfield's fantastically slinky, understated version. Her version's sparse, brooding, kind of detached for the very first verse, then picks up an almost bossa nova guitar, it's very stylish, very sexy, building to a smoulder as Dusty gets increasingly intense about it. I like it a lot, and I think as a consequence I didn't get off on the right foot with Noel's version, which starts off a bit more heavily orchestrated, a bit more traditional in some ways. And so I wrote it off, on my first listen.

But I think the more I've listened to this one, the more I've come to appreciate it for what it is. It was written for a film, and I think knowing that helps. Because the instruments do add a lot of drama from the word go, in a very filmic way. The song was commissioned for 1968's The Thomas Crown Affair, and plays over the opening credits, but also over a scene where our protagonist Thomas flies his beloved glider, a break from the tension of planning a heist.

And you get a sense of the uneasiness of that, even just in the sound of it, the way the track opens to these uneasy, shifting strings and flutes, fluttering like a glider in the wind. The horns that then cut in are dark, brooding, like dark clouds on the horizon, and the piano that accompanies it plays this series of ascending arpeggios, the chords slipping and shifting in very unstable, unpredictable ways, like a shiftier Moonlight Sonata. And then Thomas finds his groove, and the drums bring in a slinkier, jazzier feel, something a bit more determined, like Thomas is gearing up, preparing psychologically for what lies ahead. But by the end, he's uncertain again, the jazziness giving way to something slower, less decisive. It's a great, ambivalent place to land, even without any lyrics, you can feel Thomas' nerves thrumming away anxiously.

And then, adding a whole layer on top of that, you get these wonderfully poetic lyrics. I mean, just take the opening verse, which is one long sentence, describing Thomas' thoughts going round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel / Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel / Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon / Like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon / Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face / And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space. That's a massive quote right there, but it's worth taking in the sheer volume of stuff you can unpack from it, images of things turning, spiralling, ticking away, a mind that keeps going in circles, never getting anywhere, just continuing on, borne on by the endless march of time, all of it leading to that surreal image of the apple in space, the world reduced down to something so absurdly small and distant as you fly over, disconnected from it as it spins on and on.

And that's the opening verse. The rest of the song's just as rich, jumping from image after image without settling on any one metaphor, perhaps showing just how restless our protagonist's supposed to be feeling. And in among it all, little hints at a more romantic tension, too, words jangling in Thomas' head, summer giving way to autumn and winter, lovers' footprints in the sand washed away, fragmented memories, all perhaps reflecting a relationship that's run its course, a love that our hero isn't sure he'll ever get back. And so, ironically, his brain's stuck statically circling, while time keeps ticking inexorably on, bearing him up, up and away from a past he clearly wishes to return to, like a glider on a thermal.

Okay, I need to stop, I'm getting self-indulgent. But if ever there was a song that invited you to wax poetical, it's this one. And while I do still dearly love Dusty's version, I think this one, with Noel Harrison's simple, sad vocals, and with its lush, evocative instrumentation, is much better placed to actually invite you into the song, opening up this very unsettled, restless, almost existential headspace, Thomas Crown ruminating on the nature of time and change and memory and the past vs. the present vs. the future and whether you can change anything or if it's all just wheels in wheels in wheels. The song won an Oscar for Best Original Song, and I think rightly so, it's fabulous.

Favourite song of the ever-spiralling bunch: Windmills of My Mind

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 9th April

Well, do I have three different moods for you this week. There's a definite whimsy to all three tracks that I'm quite enjoying, though, an understated quirkiness that's undeniably appealing. So without furhter ado...

Goodbye - Mary Hopkin (peaked at Number 2)

Following on from her previous hit, the dark, Slavic-inspired folk of Those Were the Days, we've got something a bit lighter, this time, its production once again overseen by none other than Paul McCartney. It's still very folksy, but there's something much brighter and jauntier about this one, it fairly trips along. There's a bit of accordion, there's ukulele, there's percussion that's just Paul McCartney slapping his knees in rhythm. It feels informal, very DIY, but there's still clearly been a lot of care taken with it, it doesn't feel messy at all.

And Mary's voice, fits perfectly, she's got this very clear, sweet voice that I think suits this song well. There's an indie folk quirkiness to the delivery, but at the end of it she also does sound her age. Which you can't really say about Those Were The Days, with its "oh, to be young again" nostalgic affectations, which sound very strange when sung by an 18-year-old. Add in some strings halfway through, and you end with something that sounds very dreamy and ethereal, with a very innocent, pleasant whimsy to it.

I also like the lyrics, which are sentimental, but not overly sappy, and vague enough that you can project any number of scenarios onto them. Mary is leaving, you see. Where, or why, we don't know, but we do know that despite some regrets, she still wants to leave in good time, entreating her love please don't wake me up too late, tomorrow comes / And I will not be late / Late today when it becomes tomorrow / I will leave to go away. She reminisces fondly about the songs she and her love have enjoyed together, asks him to leave flowers by her door as he waits for her, and looks forward to the day he'll call her back to him, singing about how far away my lover sings a lonely song / And calls me to his side / When a song of lonely love invites me on / I must go to his side. And so it's a goodbye, but a bittersweet one at worst, with the hope of a reunion to come. Which is kind of lovely, in its own way.

Pinball Wizard - The Who (4)

And then we hit Pinball Wizard, a track I definitely have heard plenty. It's from the Who's 1969 album Tommy, which was one of the earliest rock operas, an attempt at telling a story across one epic rock album. This was something the Who had already been playing around with a bit, but hadn't ever quite managed to make stick. But they were aging out of the "teen rockers" bracket and wanted to do new, different things, so they kept trying, with Pete Townshend eventually drafting a story that was frankly kind of bizarre, about a kid called Tommy traumatized into going deaf, dumb and blind, but developing a rich inner life, having various unpleasant sexual experiences, tripping on LSD, discovering that he's some sort of pinball prodigy, and eventually overcoming his trauma to found a religious movement-cum-holiday camp, where his followers eventually turn on him and abandon him, and he's left just kind of reflecting on it all.

Given all that, this song has no right to work as well as it does. But here we are. I guess however bizarre it is, the story's just kind of irresistible. It's a classic underdog story, told from the perspective of an outsider who's pretty experienced at pinball, and who's amazed by Tommy's skills: from Soho down to Brighton, I must have played them all / But I ain't seen nothin' like him in any amusement hall / That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball. Most of the rest of the song's just them speculating about how Tommy does it, pointing out his supple wrist, his lack of distractions, his keen sense of smell. And right at the end, a tiny glimpse forward to his future career as a religious leader, with lines about how disciples lead him in, and he just does the rest. Which is fun, that little bit of foreshadowing setting up the idea that there's something more to Tommy, that he's not just going to stop at dominating at pinball.

That all said, I think the song mostly works not because the story's all that good. No, I do think it mostly works at the end of the day because it sounds great, this is a song that could easily be played off as a silly novelty, but the Who take it deadly seriously, and it's all the better for it. There's a drama and an intensity baked in from the start, with a simple, Spanish-sounding intro on acoustic guitar suddenly cut through by power chords on electric guitar, echoing and distorted, steadily emphasising each bar until we hit the chorus, at which point there's suddenly this propulsive drumming, there are tight pop harmonies, there are layers on layers of guitar, each bringing something slightly different to the texture of it all. All of which, taken together, sounds fabulous, and make for a hook-driven toe-tapper of a song that's so catchy you can kind of forget how patently ridiculous everything else about it is.

I Can Hear Music - The Beach Boys (10)

And finally, this, a Beach Boys song that I'd never heard of before hitting play, from an album, 20/20, that I'd also never heard of. And there might be a reason for this, because it's a slightly random, scrappy album, mostly being made up of outtakes that didn't make it into previous albums, plus a few deliberately odd experiments and at least one B-side inspired by a song by Charles Manson. Yes, that Charles Manson. The Beach Boys were somewhat tangentially mixed up in that whole scene, it sounds like it was a whole mess. Brian Wilson was also absent at this point, having checked himself into a psychiatric hospital to get help with his deteriorating mental health. Other bands would at this point have called it quits. But Dennis and Carl Wilson looked at the scraps they still had lying around and decided that yes, this would work fine as an album. And by all accounts it is a fine album, albeit a little hit and miss, thematically.

And in among all this, you get I Can Hear Music, which isn't actually a Beach Boys original. No, I Can Hear Music was originally a Ronettes song from back in 1966. As you might expect, then, it's classic girl group pop, bright and sugary and uncomplicatedly romantic, all about how everything fades away when you're with your lover: I never had a love of my own / Maybe that's why when we're all alone / I can hear music, I can hear music / The sound of the city, baby, seems to disappear. I like this. It's cute, okay? And it's also very Phil Spector, which the Beach Boys naturally lean into, there's lots of instruments and texture, with echoey percussion and chimes and tambourine and gentle oooh vocals.

All of which, at this point in 1969, feels pretty nostalgic. Add in an a cappella break near the end, with tumbling harmonies and hand-claps, and your Beach Boys bingo card is complete. Compared to Let's Do It Again, which felt like it was deconstructing the whole "sunny surf song" thing, this is a much more conventional, comfortable song, very easy to listen to and just sink in, like a warm snuggly jumper. And there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, with the Beach Boys going through such a rocky, unsettled patch, you can see the appeal of going back to basics, revisiting the roots and doing a solid, good version of something you know you can do well.

Hmmmm. I finished up this listen-through feeling super chilled out and calm, and I have to assume that's the Beach Boys' doing. It almost makes me want to sit down and listen to 20/20. I really enjoyed Let's Do It Again, which was the album's lead single, after all. And I Can Hear Music was super pretty and cozy, very pleasant to listen to. No shade on the Who, because Pinball Wizard was also great. But I needed something a bit more restful today, and the Beach Boys provided. As did Mary, to be fair. But c'mon. The Beach Boys' harmonies can't be surpassed.

Favourite song of the bunch: I Can Hear Music

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 2nd April

April already, and with the first proper breaths of spring come new, fresh sounds, straight off the streets of Kingston. Also some solid cheese from the Foundations, but there you go.

Israelites - Desmond Dekker and the Aces (peaked at Number 1)

Well this is something different. I feel like we've been seeing more and more Caribbean-tinged music creeping into the charts, with a solid back-and-forth establishing itself between US soul and R&B labels, local Jamaican labels and groups based in the UK with members from the West Indies. But this is the most obviously out there about it. Far from Johnny Nash's smooth, slightly country-ish vocals, or the Equals' driving beats, this is proper reggae, undeniable and unapologetic, for the very first time. And it got to Number 1!

The most striking thing's probably the vocals, which are in Jamaican Patois. You get a full earful of it right at the start, as Desmond opens: get up in the morning, slaving for bread sir / So that every mouth can be fed / Poor me Israelites, a-ah. To a modern ear, a bit more used to various Caribbean accents, especially in music, it doesn't seem crazy hard to understand, but at the time, the song was notorious among American and British audiences who struggled to understand the lyrics, or misheard them. I can't relate, personally, I feel like it's pretty clear, albeit with some definitely non-standard grammar.

Whatever. The song got to Number 1, and while that could just be novelty value, I think there's also a lot here that's also pretty likable, if you can get past the intelligibility of it all. It's a song about being poor, and the pressures of having no money. Desmond's getting up early, slaving away, my wife and my kids, they pack up and a-leave me. He's ragegd, shirt them a-tear up, trousers is gone / I don't want to end up like Bonnie and Clyde. But there's a hopefulness to it too, a line in the middle about how after a storm there must be a calm. And the reference to Israelites is also a tiny touch of optimism, a reference to various Rastafarian beliefs linking Rastafari believers to the twelves tribes of ancient Israel, with God rescuing them from slavery and providing them with a place to live. Which is obviously an enticing prospect to a poor Jamaican worker slaving for bread. I don't know, I just think there's depth, and it's a depth that feels very culturally specific in a kind of interesting way.

And on top of all that, it also just sounds good. The opening lines are sang slow and almost a cappella over a Jailhouse Rock-esque twanging guitar, but the pace quickly picks up and you've got that classic reggae beat, bouncy, rhythmic bass on the downbeat, choppy, staccato guitar on the offbeat. The extra vocalists (the Aces, presumably) who join on the poor me Israelites refrain give the whole thing a very communal, call-and-response feel, and almost make it feel like some kind of work song. Which feels relevant to the song's content. It's Desmond's song, but you get a sense of all of these people in the same boat, and the fellowship between them. And the whole thing's light, it fairly zips along, it doesn't outstay its welcome. All of which makes for a very easy listen, a breath of fresh air that sounds like nothing else around it.

In the Bad Bad Old Days (Before You Loved Me) - The Foundations (8)

This, on the other hand, is as standard as they come. Which isn't a bad thing at all. I generally do like the vibes that the Foundations bring, and this is no exception. This is a slick, high-energy bit of soul pop, everybody's giving it a fair bit of oomph, and the result's something that's hard to dislike. It also sounds shockingly American, I have to remind myself every single time that the Foundations are British, because this sounds almost exactly like a Temptations hit, or even a Four Tops hit, if you added some flute in. But nope, it sounds super Motown, but this one didn't even chart in the US. It got to Number 23 in Canada, but that's as close as it ever got.

Which is a shame, it's fun. There's a solid cheesiness to it, between the slightly overbearing strings and the backing vocals with their slightly silly doo-doo-doooos and their breathy love me girls, but it's a cheesiness that's hard to really hold against the track, which is otherwise solidly competent. The brass is snappy, the bass is hidden away underneath it all but surprisingly excellent, the drums just don't let up, keeping you tapping your feet. And the lead vocals are delivered with a very respectable amount of gusto and energy. By the time you hit the ending, with its key change leading into a fade-out, I defy you not to basically be convinced.

On top of that, I think Joey Young, who's now the group's lead vocalist, is also very endearing here, spinning a story of a man who was very lonely and sad before his love came into his life. She then appeared to end his misery, and bursting with gratitude, he's keen to repay her by trying his hardest to do well to pay it all back to her: one day I'm gonna make it, girl, I'm tellin' you / I'm really gonna make it to the top / And nothing in this world is gonna make me stop / You sure put a magic spell on me / I'm nothing like the man I used to be. You can debate if this is a healthy level of expectations to put on yourself, long-term, in real-life. But I think in the context of this song it's sweet. Joey's love has turned his life around, now he's determined to do well for her sake. What a good lad.

Part of me wanted to like the Foundations less than I did. Then I could contrast them to the welcome change of pace that Desmon represented, could make a point of how stale Motown is starting to get. But I can't, In the Bad Bad Days (Before You Loved Me) is a solid bop that was simply not possible to dislike. It's a little cheesy, that's the worst I can say about it. But in th grand scheme of things, I will say, I don't think it's essential listening. Whereas I really do think Israelites brought something new to the table, a much more authentically Jamaican sound and a much more authentically Jamaican than we've necessarily heard before, or at least that we've heard much recently. Very enjoyable, I do hope we hear more from Desmond soon.

Favourite song of the bunch: Israelites

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 26th March

Four slightly random picks, this week. Not bad picks. But definitely a bit random, there's no way on earth that these belong together on a playlist. But that's the beauty of this project, you do sometimes just hit a week like this, four completely different hits all jumbled together.

Sorry Suzanne - The Hollies (peaked at Number 3)

I really like the opening chords on this one, just two descending runs of notes, the second a semitone up from the first, simple enough, but the effect's lovely, even on whatever horribly beaten-up piano they've dragged out of storage for it. The vocals that come in right afterwards are equally gorgeous, with some pretty, kind of Beatles-ish harmonies. The Hollies' vocals are always a treat, but these are particularly easy on the ears.

All the better to play the role of a particularly pathetic deadbeat boyfriend, grovelling for forgiveness, and effusively so. I can't make it if you leave me, they plead, I'm sorry Suzanne, believe me / I was wrong / And I knew I was all along / Forgive me / I still love you more than ever. Yikes. What I'm getting from this is that they messed up messed up. And they're not finished, because the Hollies are determined to do this thing properly, solemnly admitting that they can't justify the tears they caused, promising that they regret what they did, confessing that they knew it was wrong even at the time, admitting they don't even know why they did it, begging her to take them back, promising things will be different if she does.

It's almost too much, except it sounds fabulous, which goes a lot of the way to warm me to this one. There's nothing super fancy going on, but I enjoy the guitar work, the subtle vibes that come in over the chorus to give it a little more intensity, the natty little squalling guitar solo near the end, the piano that comes back in quietly near the end in the background. There's a lot to like, basically, the song feels laid-back but like it's still trying, and the result's a very competent, likable bit of pop rock.

Games People Play - Joe South (6)

I knew this wouldn't be the Alan Parsons Project song, but somehow I still expected it. More fool me. Joe South, who I don't think I'd heard of before hitting play, was an American singer-songwriter who'd already had quite a long career as a session musician by the point he recorded this, the song that would go on to be his biggest hit, it sounds like. He's got a voice for country music, deep, with a proper southern accent. But this tracks' only kind of a country rock track, there's some folksier elements to it, too, plus a rather baroque string quartet at points, and even hints of what I think's a sitar in the background, so that's a fun snapshot of music in the late 1960s right there.

Also a fun snapshot of the late 1960s' social climate are the lyrics. Because this is a protest song, all about people's hypocrisy and falseness. That much is clear from the opening salvo, as Joe sings about the games people play now / Every night and every day now / Never meaning' what they say now / And never sayin' what they mean. But the examples he then goes on to give are interesting, because sure, he starts out in the context of a romantic relationship that seems to have broken down, but by the end of the song you've got conventionally religious folks, people walkin' up to you singin' glory hallelujah / And they try to sock it to ya in the name of the Lord, but you've also got people shilling a much more 1960s sort of alternative spirituality, people who're gonna teach you how to meditate, read your horoscope, cheat your faith. Which is kind of interesting, it sounds like there's a healthy skepticism there towards the hippie movement and especially its spiritual "gurus" who promised big, but at best didn't always deliver and at worse were actively trying to start some sort of cult.

Anyway, the whole song's a bit of a jam, after that point. There's a cut-off swear as Joe singing about how you don't give a da-dada-daa-da-da, but past that all just kind of fades away into this slightly messy, chaotic mix of electric sitar and strings and thrown-in ad libs and la-da-dada-daa-da-da vocals. There's something very easy-going about it, for all that Joe's got an axe to grind. The vibe's very down-to-earth, very chill, like a casual sing-along with a bunch of friends. That might just be Joe harmonizing with himself, but I like it anyway.

Boom Bang-a-Bang - Lulu (2)

I don't have high expectations for any song with a completely nonsense title, and while I do on principle rather like Lulu, her last hit was I'm a Tiger, which was pretty dire. So I wasn't feeling great about this one, and the opening bars, a comical bit of bassoon and a vaguely European-sounding schlager beat didn't do much to warm me to it either. Schlager is something I can do without at the best of times, so the idea of Lulu courting the European audience with a cheesy schlager hit was something I wasn't exactly stoked about.

The lyrics didn't help either, as they're very cutesy and Lulu's putting her most coy voice on, which isn't something I typically enjoy all that much. Come closer, come closer and listen, she croons, the beat of my heart keeps on missin' / I notice it most when we're kisisn' / Come closer and love me tonight, that's right / Come closer and cuddle me tight. Ugh. Sugary-twee and something about the word "cuddle" used seriously in a song also really upsets me. I will grant that the song's melody is good, though, soaring off into the stratosphere pleasingly as Lulu describes how her heart goes boom bang-a-bang boom bang-a-bang when you are near / Boom bang-a-bang boom bang-a-bang loud in my ear. The vocals are also less objectionable for this bit, to the point where I can very nearly imagine myself enjoying the song.

Plenty of other people did, apparently. Because this was a Eurovision hit, chosen at a national competition. Lulu had already been picked by the BBC, the competition was to see what song she'd perform, which is an interesting way to do it. I guess it at least guarantees that whatever get performed is a confirmed crowd-pleaser. Because this did please the crowds, enough that it won the contest! I will say, this is maybe not as impressive a feat as it sounds, since Lulu actually came joint first with three other acts (there being no tie-breaker rule yet) out of only 16 total entries. Still, from a 2026 perspective, with the UK sitting firmly in the perpetual nul points zone, a win's nothing to sniff at. And I like Lulu, she's very plucky, so whatever. I'm glad she did well for her sake.

Get Ready - The Temptations (10)

Is this this week's only actually cool hit? From the get go, this one's snappy, and it stays very up-tempo and energetic through it's whole run, with some muscular Motown horns, driving drums, robust vocals, shrill, trembling strings, and these little edgy piano notes peeking through. Get Ready feels stylish and slick, like it knows what it's doing.

The vocals are sung at falsetto pitch, and are sweet and gentle, but Eddie Kendricks, the singer for this track, isn't shy at all, he radiates confidence, every bit the smooth mover, buttering his lover up and telling her that I never met a girl who makes me feel the way that you do - you're alright! - whenever I'm asked who makes my dreams real, I say that you do - you're outta sight! I love the call-and-response bits here, they're so cute and fun, the Temptations butting in just to hype up this mystery lady. I even like the fee-fi-fo-fum, look out baby 'cause here I come hook. It's something that could sound kind of goofy, but somehow it works in context, coming off playful rather than childish or gimmicky.

Also, there's a sax solo! It's been ages since we've had much saxophone, so I enjoyed it when we got a proper sax break later on in the track, a session musician just wailing away on a couple of notes, really going for it. My only complaint is that it didn't do all that much, and wasn't all that long. More sax would not have gone amiss here. But it was a nice moment, while it lasted, a bit of extra colour for a track that was already plenty colourful.

Like I said in the intro, this was a gratifyingly miscellaneous batch of songs, and all four of them had their own merits, none of these was a complete write off. Lulu came close, but she did win Eurovision, and I didn't hate it as much as I hated Puppet on a String or Congratulations, so it's progress. The Hollies are reliably pretty good. And I didn't hate Joe South's odd mix of country rock and psychedelic hippie folk, either. But like I said in their entry, the Temptations are the only one of these acts that can be properly described as cool. And for that...

Favourite song of the bunch: Get Ready

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 19th March

It's January 1965, Winston Churchill has just barely died, and two deep voiced "brothers" are about to score an absolutely huge hit. Four years later, they're back, with a re-release, perhaps spurred on by Dionne Warwick covering the song on her most recent album. Or perhaps they just figured the song was popular enough for a re-release? Whatever the case, it leaves me with a bit of a conundrum - what to do with a song that's back in the Top 10 for a second bite of the apple?

You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - The Righteous Brothers (peaked at Number 10, previously Number 1)

I think the way to go here is to re-listen, then to go back to my original 1965 thoughts and see if I reckon they hold up, however many years down the line. Perhaps four more years of music will have changed my opinion on the Righteous Brothers?

Or not so much. Because I remember quite liking them, and looking back at my thoughts from 1965, I can't really disagree with anything I said. It's a big, dramatic song, with Bill Medley's slow, deep vocals standing out in a slowed-down, soupy way. It's also very Phil Spector. I'm realising, listening to this, how much I miss that massive Phil Spector sound, all the orchestral instruments, the big backing choruses, the echoing drums and cowbell and tambourine, the sheer amount of texture everything had. We've not lost it entirely, I feel like it's kind of morphed into the classic Motown mix of horns and tambourine and hand-claps and snappy backing vocals. But it's different now, I miss the days when you'd get random bassoon or church bells just to add that extra something something.

I will also say that the song's length - a whole four minutes - feels much less radical in 1969 than it did back in 1965. We've graduated onto seven-minute songs in some notable cases, four feels like nothing compared to a Hey Jude or a MacArthur Park. Admittedly, those were songs that have multiple distinct parts, which YLTLF doesn't have. But still, it doesn't at any point feel like it drags, it's very listenable. Bill and Bobby's vocals are fantastic, raw where they need to be, smooth and restrained where they need to be. I don't know if it's something to do with the recording technique, but it sounds like there's more than just the two of them at points, too, it's a very full. rich sound when you hit that big old chorus and they start harmonising with each other.

Final, miscellaneous observation: the chords in the background throughout the baby, baby bridge, with the chimes, sound almost exactly like the chords from Grease's Summer Lovin'. Once you hear it, you can't unhear it, sadly. Very unfortunate.

Looking back, it looks like this was paired up with the Kinks' Tired of Waiting for You, and that is a song that I like a lot, so I stand by my decision to name it as my favourite and not YLTLF, back then. But at the same time, I'm glad the Righteous Brothers are getting another shot at it, four years later. Because if there's any song that deserves to make it into my playlist of "favourite songs of the bunch" it's this one. Holds up, for sure. And as a fun bit of trivia, it's also the only song to have made it into the UK Top 10 not twice but three times. So we are actually due to re-listen again, but in 1990. Which will be an impressive feat indeed, if this blog gets there.

Favourite song of the four-years-too-late bunch: You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 12th March

The first of May already? How time flies! It feels like just last week it was barely the start of March. But there you go, I guess time does funny things as you approach the 1970s...

First of May - Bee Gees (peaked at Number 6)

Joking aside, I have no clue why this track's called "First of May". The date was apparently just picked because it was Barry Gibb's dog's birthday, it's not significant beyond that. Even more confusingly, the whole thing starts with lines looking back to a time when I was small and Christmas trees were tall, too. Which isn't a May thing at all, we're starting out firmly in December.

But then again, perhaps it does kind of work, because if the song's about anything, it's about time moving on, the Decembers of yesteryear long forgotten. So it kind of works, as the track skips ahead to May, years and months blurring together. In the past, when they were kids, Barry and his lover used to love while others used to play, but now we are tall and Christmas trees are small / And you don't ask the time of day. He's confident their love won't die, but guess we'll cry come first of May. Love persists, but the vividness of it fades, like apples falling from a tree that you planted together: don't ask me why, but time has passed us by / Someone else moved in from far away.

All of which is poignant, but also a bit of a bummer, and not even in a hugely interesting way. This isn't a song about a relationship breaking apart or blowing up, it's about a relationship that's just gotten kind of stale. There's still love there, it's just not as fresh or as lovely as it once was. Which is perfectly mirrored by the ending of the song, as it culminates in one big, long fade-out, the backing instruments dropping out to leave us with Barry's thin, echoing voice dwindling away to an unspectacular nothing, the song running out of steam just like Barry's relationship has. It's perfect, as a metaphor. But alas, as an ending for a song, it does lack a certain impact.

The one thing I will concede here is that yes, while the song is a little dull at points, it is at least pretty about it. It starts with strings and music box chimes, the effect's very twinkly and delicate. It picks up some piano as the verse then gets properly going, which gives it a bit more emotional heft. I'm getting slight vibes of Keane's Somewhere Only We Know, weirdly, it's that kind of gentle, sentimental piano ballad. And then the strings and the chimes are back in full force, giving even more weight to the second verse, giving it this very full, lush, elegant sound, while it lasts. It's just a shame it doesn't. Oh well.

Not my favourite song ever. I feel like a lot of these early Bee Gees tracks are like that, I've yet to fall fully in love with anything of theirs. Partly it's maybe just the vocals, which are a bit thin and reedy for my taste. But I suspect it's also the sentimentality of it all, the fact that they're doing these big, slushy ballads, slow and stately and just drowning in strings. Yawn. The Bee Gee's disco era cannot come soon enough.

Favourite song of the curiously out-of-synch bunch: First of May

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 5th March

Okay, we got another week with a lot going on! And quite the mix, too, including the return of not one but two of our favourite powerhouse pop girlies. Plus, one absolute classic, and the return of a 50s sweetie. So, without further ado...

Surround Yourself with Sorrow - Cilla Black (peaked at Number 3)

It's not a promising title, and yet the intro is quite perky, with a xylophone, I think, some heroic-sounding horns, a flourish of strings. The vibe's zippy, kind of like something you might hear at the start of a cartoon newsflash. It's bright, dynamic, upbeat, punchy, everything you absolutely don't associate with heartbreak and sorrow.

But this is just the first of several confusing decisions that have been made here. Most baffling to me are the lyrics, which scan very strangely, almost like the writer wasn't a first language speaker of English - or a human being at all. I genuinely think if you fed a bunch of break up songs to an alien, you might get something like this, as Cilla sings about how you watch the water falling down, falling down outside your head, showing a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of how tears work. Later on, she has you watching the water falling like a neon in your head, which makes even less sense.

Or what about the chorus, asking what do you do when your love breaks up / Do you fall apart like a buttercup, / Forget about tomorrow, surround yourself with sorrow? Several issues here. First, and most nit-picky, there's the clunky phrasing around your love "breaking up" (I feel like breaking up is a thing you do, not your relationship, which can "break down", but not "break up" really). Then there's the idea of buttercups just randomly falling apart, which again, isn't really a thing. And more problematically, by posing this as a question, it feels like the whole thing's supposed to be setting up Cilla up for a defiant "no", a show of how she refuses to mope, following what sounds like a pretty bad breakup. But then the song just... doesn't go there? Which feels very odd and inconclusive. Do you fall to pieces when your lover breaks up with you? Answer TBC, I guess.

I Heard It Through the Grapevine - Marvin Gaye (1)

This, on the other hand, is a story well and stylishly told. I mean, even the intro feels super cool, very slick, taking its time to get going and building up by layers, with this minimal bass kicking things off, then some sparse heartbeat percussion, a tambourine, light and rattlesnake-quick, before we get a brief lick of guitar, a squeal of trumpets and then Marvin, ooooh, I bet you're wonderin' how I knew / 'Bout your plans to make me blue / With some other guy you knew before / Between the two of us guys, you know I love you more...

All of which sets up a situation where you have to feel for Marvin. Not only is his love cheating on him, but they didn't even have the guts to tell him to his face, he had to hear it through the grapevine. He describes feeling sad, so much that I'm just about to lose my mind, but underneath it all there's also an anger you can hear in the cutting way Marvin delivers lines about how surprised he was, how I can't help being confused, or about how you could have told me yourself / That you loved someone else instead. And finally, you get a sense of his embarrassment, too, with his heartbreak being such a public thing, a spectacle and a humiliating one at that, with Marvin admitting that I know a man ain't supposed to cry / But these tears I can't hold inside.

It's powerful stuff, but Marvin makes the smart decision not to go too hard, emotionally. He's angry, but his anger doesn't manifest in fiery, snarling outbursts. No, Marvin's controlled here, frosty almost, his anger a cold, precise weapon as he exposes all the ways in which his love has done him wrong, exactly how they've hurt him. It suits him and his voice much better than I suspect a louder anger would. And everything around it just supports this, from the low, coolly dispassionate heard it through the grapevine / Not much longer would you be mine backing vocals, the slinky bongos, the elegant strings throughout, the anxious but still tightly controlled tremolo at the end on what I think is an organ. The whole thing feels like it's on edge, dangerously so, but it never quite tips over, Marvin just about keeps a handle on things - but the tension by the end is thick enough to cut.

Monsieur Dupont - Sandie Shaw (6)

We haven't heard from Sandie in a hot minute, have we? And yet, here she is, with a song about a whirlwind romance in Paris. The rain was falling down as I flew out of town, she sings, I went to Paris for the day / And there I got to know a certain Romeo / With oh so gentle continental ways. This Romeo, of course, is our titular Monsieur Dupont, who made me see so tenderly that I was never loved before. Which is cute, I guess? In some ways it kind of feels like a follow-up to Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To (My Lovely), another song that's playing with this very glamourous, jet set European fantasy.

Except where Peter was ironic and detached and a little bit mean, Sandie's very camp, to the point where it's all a little bit cringey. I don't say this as somebody who tends to care much. But from the goofy kazoo throughout, to the breathy, schoolgirl voice Sandie's putting on for the Monsieur Dupont lines, to the twee little ta la la la backing vocals, to the accordion that comes in halfway through, to the actual French lines she slips in near the end, to the key change near the end and the comical timpani hits, it's all a bit much, I fear, the song starts to feel like a parody, and not a particularly funny one.

Meshing strangely with all this, there's also a layer of sort-of-innuendo to it, with Sandie singing about how I seem to realise the kind of paradise / Your continental kiss could lead me to, demanding of her Parisian beau oh won't you tell me now / The way you say en français: "Give me more", admitting towards the end Monsieur Dupont, I know it's wrong / But I don't ever want to go home anymore. It feels cheeky, girlishly flirty, the sort of thing you'd listen to and maybe giggle about with your friends a bit, I can see the appeal if you're, like, thirteen. And yet, it's kind of spoiled for me by the fact that my immediate association when I hear "Monsieur Dupont" is the bowler-hatted bumbling detective from Tintin. Who's as un-sexy as they come, I'm afraid. Unfortunate.

Gentle on My Mind - Dean Martin (2)

And finally, it's Dean Martin. I'm glad the Rat Pack are still scoring hits, but this one's a bit of an odd fit. It's a country hit, originally, written by one John Hartfort (no, I'd not heard of him, either) after he'd seen the 1967 film Doctor Zhivago. Inspired by the film, but also by his own personal experiences, the result was this, a song about a drifter, roaming the country, not tied down by a fixed home, ink on paper, a person he needs to get home to - but still longing for a lost love, ever gentle on my mind.

This does give the song a certain poetry. I like the contrast between the specific, gritty details of the hobo lifestyle - the battered sleeping bag stashed behind somebody's couch, the crackling cauldron of soup poured into an old tin cup in a forgotten railyard, my beard a roughenin' coal pile, and a dirty hat pulled low across my face - and the airier romantic ideas that peek through in between, the longing of it all, as I pretend I hold you to my breast and find / That you're wavin' from the back roads by the river of my memory. There's a lot of beauty there, and the idea of somebody being gentle on my mind, always there, but not an unwelcome presence, is a nice one too, there's a wistfulness to it that refuses any bitterness. He didn't get his girl, but the memory of her doesn't have to sour into something ugly, he can love her, leave her, and it doesn't have to be this huge issue.

And yet, I do think that Dean's voice is just a bit too smooth for it all, a bit too pleasant. The orchestration here's very slick, lots of fabulous strings, big, snappy brass, backing chorus. It's a lot, very cinematic, very swish, very polished, which would be fine, except it's a song about a hobo, I just don't think it needs all that. The big hit version in the US was by Glen Campbell, and having just listened to and loved Wichita Lineman, that makes a lot more sense to me. Listening to his version now, it works so much better, he's got a much more homey, down-to-earth voice. The banjo accompaniment's busy, but much folksier, and the track picks up speed like a train building up a head of steam, quick enough that Glen manages to fit a whole extra verse or two. I don't like it quite as much as Wichita Lineman, but I do think it's pretty good, and by quite a way preferable to Dean's version, alas.

I need to listen to some more Glen Campbell, I'm starting to think. Him and Nina Simone, they've been my recent discoveries, I've enjoyed them a lot. Which is more than can be said for many of this week's songs, which were uniformly interesting, but not always in a good way. Dean's classy as ever, but I just don't think the song he picked suited him all that well, while Cilla's song left me with more questions than I started with, and Sandie's answered questions I don't think anybody needed to ask, like "how French is too French?" All of which leaves us with only one serious contender for favourite song, but it is a doozy...

Favourite song of the bunch: I Heard It Through the Grapevine

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 26th February

Two quite different songs this week, but both with their charms, one that I could just sit and listen to for hours, and another that gives us a tiny glimpse of a subculture that also kind of fascinates me...

Wichita Lineman - Glen Campbell (peaked at Number 7)

Yup, this one sounds fantastic from the get-go, with this simple descending bass lick, provided by Carol Kaye, legendary session musician extraordinaire. The bass then gives way to smooth strings, but also this strange, almost electronic bleeping noise, it settles us into a country groove, but a weird one, warm and pleasant but with this slightly ethereal note to it, the sense of something almost floating over the top of it all.

All of which is forgotten when Glen's vocals come in. He's got a very smooth voice, but there's also this very real touch of melancholy, as he sings about his job as a lineman, somebody who goes out to test telephone wires and fix them where they develop faults. Which is so specific, and Glen really draws out the emotions of it, the loneliness a job that keeps you always on the road, as he sings about how I am a lineman for the county / And I drive the main road / Searchin' in the sun for another overload. Something in the melody here is really appealing to me, the rise and then the tired fall on "another overload". I can't really explain why, but it's wonderful, and the swell of strings afterwards only makes it better, it's beautiful, you see the romance of the job, the nobility of it, this humble, hard-working all-American man travelling the length and breadth of the county to keep things working.

And yet, it's also sad, because Glen's lonely and homesick, hence the lines about how I hear you singing in the wire / I can hear you through the whine. There's a bittersweet beauty to this, the way that his love turns even something like electricity in a wire into something lovely, a source of comfort - and also a reminder of all he's missing out on. The strings at this point are high and shrill, almost mimicking the electrical whine. And then the final line, about how the Wichita lineman / Is still on the line comes in perfectly. It's simple, but captures the absurdity of it; despite his yearning, despite his big feelings, he's still got a job to do, is still stuck on that line working. The final note soars upwards, there's a brief snatch of Morse code guitar, and then it's right back to the nitty gritty of the job, and how tired Glen is of it all, as he sings about needing a vacation, worrying about the weather and if the lines he's laying can even stand the strain. And in among it all, his longing is steady, a constant that never really goes away, with some of the most plain, romantic lines of the whole thing, Glen confessing that I need you more than want you / And I want you for all time / And the Wichita lineman / Is still on the line.

I love this. I love the shimmering, "country plus ethereal strings" sound of it, I love the emotional feel of it, I love the way that the second verse shifts to a subtly different key, I love Glen's tired, downbeat delivery. And at risk of sounding a bit pretentious, I also love the poetry of it, the clever ways it plays around with ideas of connection and communication vs. loneliness. I mean, Glen's a lineman. His whole job is literally about finding the points where the phone lines are down and fixing them so that people elsewhere can stay connected. And yet, ironically, this requires Glen to be away from home, out in the vast, lonely, disconnected emptiness of the country, so deeply alone that company becomes a need, more than just a want. Which feels very relatable, very human. I may not be a lineman, but I've had seasons - whether because of work or for other reasons - where I've felt disconnected like this, where I've felt the same tired, anxious longing for home, for family, for a friend, for somebody.

I'll Pick a Rose for My Rose - Marv Johnson (10)

I feel a bit sorry for this one competing with Wichita Lineman, which is a very good song. But Marv does acquit himself just fine here, I would say. This is some solid, enjoyable Motown soul, with a good energy and a cute romantic concept, the idea of Marv going to a garden to reminisce about Rose, the girl he was separated from, who he's determined to win back, resolving that I'll pick a rose for my Rose / 'Cause somehow I know she knows / This love deep in my heart is still alive. It's bouncy, it's bright, there's a bit of a "forbidden love" Romeo and Juliet story hidden in the middle, as Rose's rich parents don't approve of the poor, lower-class Marv. All the ingredients are here for an engaging hit.

There are also a few touches here and there that are quite cheesy. Not in a necessarily bad way, but cheesy none the less. Even just the pun of giving a rose to somebody called Rose is a bit naff, it's got big sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey energy, that same brand of bubblegum frivolity. But the silliest element, for me, has to be the truck driver's gear shift of a key change that crops up about thirty seconds before the end of the track, which is as cliché as you could get, and startlingly sudden, too, it's not telegraphed at all, just turns up and wallops you. Zero subtlety.

The most surprising thing is that this charted at all, though. I'd never heard of Marv Johnson, and looking him up, it turns out that while he was a pretty important figure in the early development of the Motown sound in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he never really was a big deal in the UK, instead scoring most of his hits in the US and in Australia, weirdly enough. He then drops off everybody's radar in 1961, reappears and produces some minor hits in the mid-1960s. But this single really was a last hurrah, and it didn't chart at all in his native US - only in the UK. So what was going on? Well, in short, Northerners. Basically, a few clubs, notably in Wigan, Manchester and Blackpool, had begun playing more niche soul records, eschewing the more current, trendy Motown stuff in favour of older, more obscure records, often with a faster, more danceable beat, but less funky, less polished in some cases. The trend was very regional, but huge, with some clubs famous for owning rare records that literally no other club had a copy of. All of which Motown responded to by re-releasing older records and by dusting off older artists to record new stuff - hence Marv getting one last bite of the apple, here.

Northern soul really fascinates me, it just seems so unlikely. Or perhaps the northerner in me is amused by Wigan, of all places, being this centre of popular music. The fact that anybody in Detroit cared at all about what was being spun in Wigan's clubs both baffles and delights me. And yet, the best song this week is quite clearly not Marv's. Not when you've got Glen's absolute masterpiece right there.

Favourite song of the bunch: Wichita Lineman

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 19th February

Sometimes you fire up your record player and you just fancy something classy. Maybe something European? A waltz, perhaps, but make it moody, dark, surprisingly bitter. Yes, that will do nicely...

Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) - Peter Sarstedt (peaked at Number 1)

On one level, this is a pretty basic song. It's singer-songwriter folk at almost its most stripped back, just Peter singing, his voice plaintive and not super polished, plus a strummed acoustic guitar and a very little bit of accordion at the start and the end. The whole things feels like a beat-up busker's waltz, something you'd hear drifting along on the wind on a rainy day in Paris from some down-on-his-luck bohemian.

But that's maybe the appeal here, because this is a song that's meant to conjure up a vision of a lady who's part of a very specific set, the international jet set, which I've just learnt is a term that was only coined in the 1950s, as air travel became cheaper and a whole class of people could emerge who could jet around the world wherever they fancied, weekend in Rome, party in Paris, shopping in London, back to New York for a break... the possibilities were endless, if you had enough money, and our protagonist is very much part of that set, her description packed with reference to high-society figures, artistic darlings, sought-after brands, the works.

It's an impressively wide range of references, actually. Our protagonist, Marie Claire, talks like Marlene Dietrich, dances like ballerina Zizi Jeanmaire, owns designer clothes by Balmain, lives off Paris' Boulevard St. Michel, listens to Rolling Stones records, hangs out with French singer Sacha Distel, studies art at the Sorbonne, visits resorts on the Riviera like Juan-les-Pins and ski resorts like St. Moritz, drinks Napoleon brandy, accepts gifts of horses from the Aga Khan. There's some traditional high culture there, but also pop culture, youth culture, all of it blending to form this image of a cultured, worldly woman who can afford to have many interests, who's just effortlessly chic, no real effort needed.

And yet, she's sad, Peter seems to imply, asking her where do you go to, my lovely, oh when you're alone in your bed? She drinks the fine brandy, but you never get your lips wet. This high-flying life isn't necessarily all that satisfying, is the implication. People hang on her every word, but they don't realize where you came from / And I wonder if they really care, or give a damn. Which, apart from being maybe the strongest language we've heard yet, also suggests that she's isolated, that nobody really knows her, not like Peter, who it's revealed grew up with her in poverty in Naples, two children begging in rags, both keen to shake off the stigma of their lowly birth, but one clearly more successful than the other. It's a romance novel-esque set-up, as she's clearly implied to still be in love with Peter.

This could be a nice, poignant moment, in theory, Peter reflecting wistfully on how life has separated the two of them. But in practice, there's also a meanness to it. Specifically, I dislike the line inviting her to look into my face, Marie-Claire, and remember just who you are / Oh, then go and forget me forever, but I know you still bear the scar, deep inside. Because of course her love for Peter has to be the most important, most defining part of her character. That's all that could possibly be going through this (clearly intelligent, complex, highly motivated) young lady's mind. She's reduced to this stereotype by the end, the poor, unhappy rich lady, pining after the boy she once knew. It's very reductive. Plus there's a smug dismissiveness to the final line concluding that I know where you got to my lovely, oh when you're alone in your bed / I know the thoughts that surround you, because I can look inside your head. The whole thing is giving me flashbacks to Like a Rolling Stone, another song that I just think is unnecessarily unkind to its subject. Which makes for an interesting song, but not necessarily one I like.

The Way It Used to Be - Engelbert Humperdinck (3)

And then, much like Marie Claire, we get a song with a secret Italian origin. Because yes, this is yet another Italian song contest hit. Well, it isn't, actually, or if it was, I can't find any records of it. But the artist, Isabella Iannetti, seems to have made her name at the Cantagiro song contest, before going on to compete in various other contests and festivals, including one in Malta that she won outright. So even if Melodia (as this tune was initially titled) wasn't a contest hit, it's only a step or two away from being one. If you'd asked me how much of a factor regional Italian song contests would be in driving the UK charts, back when I started this blog, I'd have quite possibly laughed at you. But nope, turns out they're huge.

his time round, it's Engelbert who's the beneficiary of this rather strange pipeline. And he does a pretty competent job, I'd say? I've not always been a fan of Engelbert, but here I think he brings a moodiness and a sense of drama that works in his favour. The song is, at heart, a big, sentimental waltz, but there's a heaviness to it, a sense of Engelbert brooding quietly in the dark even in the midst of joy and celebration. Hence the surprisingly restrained, slinky opening, swung cymbal hits, deep bass, an anxious ostinato in the guitar as Engelbert describes his lonely table just for one / In a bright and crowded room / While the music has begun / I drink to memories in the gloom. Pretty melodramatic, right? He's so emo, I love the angst of it all, the way he's so ostentatiously, ridiculously miserable. You have to roll your eyes, but in a good way, here, at the start.

Unfortunately, by the chorus, I am beginning to get a little tired of it. The song ramps the energy up, and it just feels too big, too brash, lots of strings, lots of backing chorus, lots of brass. It's a bit smothering. Plus there's a bitterness to it, an anger now creeping into Engelbert's delivery that I don't think I like, as Engelbert entreats the band to play the song the way it used to be / Before she left and changed it all to sadness / And maybe if she's passing by the window / She will hear our love song and the melody. Which is... look, she doesn't like you, dude. I know that's hard, but you can't keep doing this to yourself. Combined with the increased intensity, it makes Engelbert sounds like a mean, weepy drunk, coping with a breakup in some pretty unhealthy ways. I mean, get a load of the line in the next verse about how when his friends stop by, I laugh and hide the pain / It's quite easy 'til they go / Then the song begins again. That's not healthy. I know the idea is that he's suffering stoically in silence, a true, macho man. But c'mon. He sounds a few drinks away from some very bad decisions and probably a whole lot of misogynistic opinions. Not appealing in the slightest.

These two songs felt like companion pieces. I could absolutely see them being from the perspective of the same guy, just at slightly different points in his story. It would make for a classy film, an epic romance set somewhere suitably glamorous, location shooting in Paris and Naples, scenes shot in smoky bars, a cold but rich and effortlessly beautiful lady haunting the narrative at every turn. Unfortunately, our protagonist seems like a bit of a resentful so-and-so, and honestly, at the end of the day, I do think our love interest is probably better off without him. Not a fan, though at least the childhood flashbacks give his character a touch of interesting nuance.

Favourite song of the bunch: Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 12th February

I don't know if I've ever expressed my distaste for parentheses in song titles, but I really don't like them. They're so dithery. Include it, or don't include it, it's not hard. Anyway, with that (said) ...

(If Paradise Is) Half as Nice - Amen Corner (peaked at Number 1)

Huh. Turns out this is another originally Italian song, the original, titled Il paradiso, having been written by one Lucio Battisti and recorded by various Italian artists, including a debut at "Festivalbar", which is yet another Italian song contest. I don't know what they were putting in the water over there, but 1960s Italians loved a song contest. Honestly, I have no idea why it's so prominent. Did studios get special funding for it? Was it some quirk of how the TV media landscape worked back then? Is it some holdover from an older, local tradition of song contests? Very mysterious.

Whatever the case, like so many other songs coming from these contests, Il paradiso ended up getting "translated" (loosely) into English, and the result's this, an enjoyably chaotic pop rock hit. It was apparently offered to the Tremeloes first, and I can see that, there's this very Tremeloe-like rowdy, informal sing-along feel, with a sense of the band just piling on higgledy-piggledy, especially for the la la la bits and the cascading if paradise is half as nice chorus. It's a very tuneful, almost choral piling-on, better harmonised than anything I think the Tremeloes could have pulled off. But it's still just a little bit rough around the edges, appealingly so.

It doesn't half repeat the chorus, though. It's like half the song is just the refrain, repeated. It's not a bad refrain, it's catchy enough, the vocals are pretty, and there's something I really like but can't really describe well in the way the chords all come together, it's very satisfying. But I am starting to get a little bored of the same bit over and over again: If paradise is half as nice / As heaven that you take me to / Who needs paradise, I'd rather have you. Thankfully they do dress it up near the end, doing that clever thing where they sing the verse and it harmonises with the chorus, a clever little counterpoint. Which I do enjoy. So yeah, I suspect if I were back in 1969 and hearing this on the radio everywhere, I probably would start to get annoyed by it, but for now, it's fine. Probably will be stuck in my head come tomorrow.

I think I'm coming to quite like Amen Corner, not least for their lovely Welsh accents, which is something I feel like you don't hear every day, or you didn't back in 1969, for sure. But beyond that, there's also something about them, something a little bit reminiscent of the sort of obscure 1990s and early 2000s Britpop and alt rock that I used to dig out of charity shop bargain bins. Very nostalgic.

(Favourite song of) the bunch: (If Paradise Is) Half as Nice

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 5th February

Whew, a bumper week, this time around! But what's this? One of these songs is not like the others, you say? Hmm, I'll have to keep an eye out, I wonder which It's going to be, I'm sure the contrast will be real subtle...

Dancing in the Street - Martha and the Vandellas (peaked at Number 4)

Starting strong, with a certified Motown classic. From the very start, you know this is going to be a tune, with that heroic blast of trumpets, plus a mostly one-note bassline, and snapping, echoing tambourine. The result isn't a subtle beat, it's heavy and stompy and just kind of keeps trucking on for the whole song, there's no variation to it. But it sounds cool, and Martha's giving it her all on the top, with these strident, brassy vocals. She sounds very cool, detached but in a confident way.

And she uses it to call people to action, quite literally, as she's calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat? / Summer's here and the time is right for dancing in the street. A list of cities follow where she says they're already out dancing, followed by instructions: wear whatever you like, go out, grab a partner and it's time to go go go. This is an invitation across the nation, Martha sings, a chance for folks to meet / There'll be laughing, singing and music swinging, and dancing in the street. There's something very utopian about that, right? The idea, in the middle of this very unsettled decade, lots of social change, people not always seeing eye-to-eye, that good enough music could bring everybody together, whatever their background, that they could meet up, laugh together, enjoy community with each other.

And then there's the racial element, which wasn't necessarily the intention from the get-go, but which soon became part of this song's appeal, as it became a bit of a Civil Rights anthem. Which makes a lot of sense, a song about all sorts of different people coming together in the streets, and the powerful sense of community and energy that comes with that is really tempting to turn into a protest song. Especially since it's got the plausible deniability of being about dancing and not, you know, rioting. Plus, there's the added bonus of all of the cities name-checked all having a significant black population, since they're all cities where there was soul and R&B music being made at the time (note the shout out to Detroit, Motown's own Motor City, in the middle of it all). Which I can't imagine hurt the song's rep as a Civil Rights banger.

But the main thing is still probably just the fact that it sounds good. It's got a heck of a lot of energy for what's actually quite a steady, repetitive song - the drums/tambourines/hand claps are doing a lot, as are the backing vocalists, amping it all up and giving it this driving almost rock vibe. Which was Martha Reeve's contribution, apparently - the song was written by none other than Marvin Gaye, who envisaged it as a much softer, more intimate thing, and it was Martha who reportedly decided to make it sound a bit more like the rowdy, hyped-up party that the lyrics were describing. A good call, I suspect.

To Love Somebody - Nina Simone (5)

Nina's up next, though I didn't realise that the track she's covering's actually a Bee Gees original. This didn't immediately seem like an obvious fit to me, but it turns out, looking into it, that that might be the point, since it was the Bee Gees deliberately trying to write a soul track, at the request of manager Robert Stigwood. The goal was never for the Bee Gees themselves to cover it, it was written for Otis Redding, but when Otis died in a plane crash that same year, the Gibbs decided to give it their best shot, to relatively little acclaim, at least in their native UK. The US liked it a little more, though, enough that that Nina Simon picked up on it.

And I do like this a lot. It's very soulful, full of emotion, but Nina's delivery's a carefully-controlled smoulder, every time she's starting to amp up the volume, she pulls it back, reins herself in. Which suits the song perfectly, it's a ballad about this very hopeless devotion. She sees people happy in love from afar, but is stuck looking at her own love from a distance, wanting and waiting, trying to do things right, but what good does it bring / If I ain't got you, if I ain't got you. And then, that chorus, Nina proclaiming almost angrily that you don't know what it's like, you don't know what it's like / To love somebody, the way I love you. They're simply lyrics, but Nina sells them perfectly, with this balance of frustrated desperation and yearning, despite it all.

It sounds great, with this warm guitar, bluesy piano and funky bass holding it all together, horns cutting through on and off, subtler touches on chimes and strings accenting it all, high-pitched backing vocals contrasting with Nina's contralto, drum fills between the lines that are just the right amount of showy. It doesn't feel like it's showing off, but there's still quite a lot going on, and the end result's a song that's really grown on me, the more I've listened. There's no showboating, it ends quietly, but it's all the better for it, I really do think.

I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations (3)

I guess this makes sense. Motown seems to be really good at boosting girl groups and boy bands alike, so it makes a lot of sense that you'd end up with collaborations. Still, something about it still feels quite modern, to me. I feel like K-pop groups do this, nowadays? I don't know, my K-pop knowledge is pretty patchy, but whatever's going on, it feels pretty gimmicky. Motown girls, plus Motown boys, equals money, I can only imagine the logic is, here.

Though, to their credit, they did at least make a full album, the unimaginatively and rather unwieldily-named Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations. Diana Ross is fully the main attraction, at this point, with the album basically being an excuse for her to duet with the various Temptations; the amount of Supreme involvement is otherwise pretty variable, by the look of things. But kudos to them for committing and doing a thing. I don't think people are really out there making super popular duet albums nowadays, and it's a shame, I feel like it would add a nice bit of variety to the musical landscape. But as it is, in terms of properly popular artists, I can only really think of one or two in recent years. A shame.

Anyway, all this is just me putting off talking about the song, because at the end of the day, it's just a basic love song that as the title suggests feels kind of predatory at points? I mean, we start with the Temptations promising that I'm gonna do all the things for you a girl wants a man to do, oh baby / I'll sacrifice for you, I'll ever do wrong for you, oh baby. Which is concerning already. I don't want the Temptations doing wrong for me. And once Diana comes it, the song's then mostly her singing about how she'll make them love her by any means possible. I'm gonna use every trick in the book, she sings, I'll try my best to get you hooked, promising that look out boy, 'cause I'm gonna get you / I'm gonna make you love me. Which, okay, isn't the worst thing ever committed to song, but I still don't think she comes off great here.

None of this is exactly helped by the vocals, either, which are very falsetto-heavy on the Temptations' part, while Diana's at her breathiest, simpering away without really sounding particularly sold on any of what she's singing. Throw in some genuinely cringy spoken word moments towards the end of the track, these cliché lines about how every day that we're apart, I'll hunger for every wasted hour and the like, and the result is something that's boilerplate if I'm feeling generous. Not a song I think I will be listening to again.

Please Don't Go - Donald Peers (3)

I really was hoping for a final Motown track here. It would have been a great way to round off a mostly-solid week of soul. But alas, Donald is about as far removed from that world as you can get. A Welsh singer whose singing career began all the way back in the 1920s, his presence in the charts in 1969 feels like a mistake, and an unlikely one at that, given as how Donald moved to Australia in the early 1950s, following some moderate success there, and by all accounts then was entirely forgotten by whatever fanbase he had in the UK. He moved back in the 1960s, following a divorce, but had to work his way back into the public eye via the provincial social club circuit, a circuit I didn't realise existed. He got a show on BBC Wales, which I also didn't realise existed (I assumed it was 1990s or 2000s establishment, but no, 1964). And it was here he made his comeback, introducing the public to Tom Jones, for example, which apparently gave him enough cred to get one final song into the charts.

So, what's the song like? Well... I feel like I say this a lot, but it really does feel like the sort of song you could have heard in the charts circa 1952. There's something very dusty and antique about it, between Donald's warbling voice, the Mantovani-esque strings, the weird jangling noise, the liberal use (some might say overuse) of the backing chorus. There are some unnecessarily melodramatic lyrics, too, Donald pleading with his love, please don't do, I beg you, don't go / For I need you here with me / If we part, down deep in my heart / I know what the end will be. Which is one heck of a guilt-trip, holy moly, Donny. What have you done, that you need that level of grovelling? Bad, bad, very bad.

I guess I can appreciate the fact that the song does at least do that neat thing that 1950s songs sometimes did where it bases itself on a popular classical tune. In this case, I almost immediately clocked it as the Barcarolle from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. It's a lilting, rolling little tune, very romantic, very sentimental, you've absolutely heard it before, and yet hearing it here, in the charts, does feel suitably whimsical. Even if the rest of the track's kind of dire.

I should say, looking at the charts info, it does seem like there's also a Simon & Garfunkel EP, the Mrs. Robinson EP. But this is my blog, I set the rules, and so, for the sake of my sanity, I don't think I'll be listening to EPs. Which leaves us with this, four Motown tracks that form a good, cohesive playlist... right up until the last minute. Alas, Donald really did put a dampener on things there, bringing the party to a close with an exceedingly outdated whimper. Oh well.

Favourite song of the bunch: To Love Somebody

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 29th January

January just flying by, and here to see the month out, it's Johnny Nash, with a track that's trying many things and succeeding at very few of them.

You Got Soul - Johnny Nash (peaked at Number 6)

You'd expect it to be a soul track. And the opening seconds, with their funky little guitar lick, do feel like the opening to a soul track. But about five seconds in, there's a drum fill and then suddenly we've got a reggae sort of beat, heavy emphasis on the second and fourth beat of the bar, drums setting it all off. Except it's not straight reggae, either, you've also got these strange, ghostly you got soul backing vocals layered over the top, plus a shedload of bright violins, Johnny's voice, which is very American, no trace of a Jamaican accent. Which is probably for the best, but still, it does make for an overall effect that's much more pop than reggae, existing in some strange, wishy-washy space between the two, with elements of soul and of country music mixed in, none enough to really give the song much character.

This wouldn't be a problem if the lyrics were sufficiently interesting, but they really aren't, they're pretty nothing-y. For most of the track, Johnny's singing about how I can tell by the way you move, you got soul, yeah / I can tell by the way you groove, you got soul. He can see that you've got soul in the way you walk, the way you talk, they way you dance, the way you romance. Soul is hard to find / So why don't you come on now and let it shine, Johnny croons, encouraging you just let yourself be free, so the whole world can see. Talk about cheesy. The whole "let your light shine" message feels very cliché, we're definitely in motivational poster territory. Not thrilling me, here.

I'm also increasingly wondering if I actually like Johnny Nash's voice. I don't think I've really picked up on it on other songs he's done, but he's got quite a high, nasal voice, a little whiny at points, I don't love it. It reminds me a little of the Bee Gees, though the I can tell by the way you walk line might also be to blame for that - strong echoes of Stayin' Alive. Which is a shame, because while I'm not a Bee Gees fan, I do quite like Stayin' Alive. So that's not a comparison Johnny's going to come away from looking great.

Like quite a few songs recently, it's not outright objectionable. But I don't think mixing pop and reggae is doing Johnny many favours here, because what he's landed on is a watered-down, slightly disappointing take on both. Not pop enough to stick in my brain, not reggae enough to be actually interesting. Backing singers weird, lyrics dull, Johnny's voice not entirely convincing. Meh.

Favourite song of the can't-decide-what-genre-it-wants-to-be bunch: You Got Soul

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 22nd January

Breaking a streak of single songs, we've got two this week, both by returning artists who I have quite liked in the past. So I'm feeling tentatively quite optimistic here, but I guess time will tell...

Blackberry Way - The Move (peaked at Number 1)

Even before hitting play, the title of this one feels like it ought to be a Beatles track, some strange mix of Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane. And upon hitting play, the comparison, especially with Penny Lane, feels apt. Like that track, Blackberry Way's a quirky, carefully orchestrated psychedelic pop number about an imagined neighbourhood. Throw in an interesting mix of instruments - I'm immediately hearing some James Bond strings, but there's also jangly harpsichord and clanking chimes - and some tight vocal harmonies on the chorus, and you've got something that definitely is in conversation with the Beatles.

Except I also feel like there's a stompiness to it that's all the Move's own, though, a heavy beat that makes it feel sulky in a way that Penny Lane isn't. There's a darkness to it, a gloom that's reflected in the lyrics, which are dark and pessimistic. We open laconically on Blackberry Way / Absolutely pouring down with rain / It's a terrible day. And things get worse. It's early, and the Move have been ditched by their girl. Now they're stuck standing around, unsure what to do now that their love has left them. And so they traipse around, visiting the park only to find the place overgrown, the trees bare, the boats on the lake abandoned, unattended now, they're all to drown / I'm incredibly down / Just like myself they are neglected. This is some high-level moping. Very pathetic. And as a result, the Move decide they want to leave, hence the goodbye Blackberry Way chorus. There's nothing here for them any more, and so unlike the Beatles, keen to revisit their old stomping grounds, the Move want out of there, the quicker the better.

All of which I feel like I ought to like more than I actually do. "Beatles but moodier" is a concept that in theory I enjoy. But in practice it's just all so self-pitying, and takes itself so seriously, with an abundance of over-written lines I just can't take seriously, like the one about battlefield of careless sins cast to the wind, which as far I can tell means nothing, or the line about them feeling so full of emptiness without her, which is more straightforward, but still a bit ridiculous. And beyond that, it's just very repetitive and thumpy, after a while you start to feel like you're being beaten around the head with it a bit. Which is a shame, I really did want to like this one more. But there you go.

Fox on the Run - Manfred Mann (5)

And then we get this. I thought I knew this track, but it turns out I was thinking of a completely different track, also called Fox on the Run, but by the glam rock band Sweet. I think I might also have been mixing in a bit of the melody from the similarly named Band on the Run by Wings, too. Too many songs with the same name!

Anyway, once I got over my confusion, I did quite like this one. It's a bit folksy, lots of strummed guitar and shaker, but with a good, driving rock beat. The band sing with gusto, a rousing, slightly rowdy chorus. There are a few nice harmonies. It sounds quite a bit like Quinn the Eskimo, which shouldn't really surprise me, give that it's the same band. Except where Quinn the Eskimo was a nonsensical song, Fox on the Run's a bit more serious, telling a story of a girl who's done a number on our poor main singer, and is now tracking him down: she walked through the corn leading down to the river / Her hair shone like gold in the hot morning sun / She took all the love that a poor boy could give her / And left me to die like a fox on the run.

It's an evocative metaphor - fox hunting is a very emotive subject, at least in the UK, so casting Manfred as a desperate, cornered fox and this mysterious lady as the cruel bloodhound chasing him down is effective enough, and very striking. Linking it to Adam and Eve and the Fall, when woman tempted man down in paradise's hall, does then feel a bit like overkill. But Manfred's backed into a corner, he's not necessarily going to be fair and reasonable about things. And we do move past that part pretty quickly, so I'm not going to complain too much.

What I will complain about is the key change near the end, which is super clunky, cropping up out of nowhere and hitting you like a tonne of bricks. It's very jarring, and it doesn't even add all that much to the song, I feel like the track would get by just fine without it. It doesn't really change the mood, it doesn't add any energy that wasn't already there, it doesn't underscore any particularly important lyrics. It's literally just a key change for the sake of having a key change. I really do wonder what was going on when the band added it. Did they fear that the track would run out of steam, otherwise? Did they think the listeners would get bored? Was it some sort of studio mistake? Or did it serve some purpose when the track got performed live, perhaps? Whatever the case, it's odd. Not a deal-breaker, but a definite weird little quirk of this song. Very unnecessary.

Well, I will say that both the Move and Manfred Mann have put out better songs - Fire Brigade and Pretty Flamingo being my favourites, respectively - but I do still think that Blackberry Way and Fox on the Run are both fine and listenable, at the end of the day. As a response to Penny Lane, there's something entertainingly grouchy about Blackberry Way. And Fox on the Run sounded great, one notably strange key change aside. So yeah, I've been feeling a bit more nit-picky this week, but at the end of the day I do still think the 1969 version of me probably wouldn't have minded either of these.

Favourite song of the bunch: Fox on the Run

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 15th January

And the last in a run of one-song weeks, it's a duet, this time. I don't think we've had a duet for a bit, it's a nice shake-up, I'm looking forward to it!

Private Number - Judy Clay and William Bell (peaked at Number 8)

Well, this is a song with an admirably straightforward premise. William spells it out at the start, singing about how since I've been gone, you've had your number changed / But my love for you, girl, still remains the same. So, he loves a lady, he went away, she changed her number. Doesn't look promising. But then, the song's twist, if you can call it that, is Judy coming in to explain that the situation isn't as dire as it might seem, singing that I'm sorry you couldn't call me when you got home / But other fellows kept on calling while you were gone / So I had the number changed, but I'm not acting strange. You see? She's still faithful to him, she still loves him, all's good, here's her private number just to prove it.

I guess that does make this a song that you couldn't really record today. I mean, I guess there's a mobile version of it where she's blocked his number, or whatever. But it's harder to do that accidentally, I think in the modern version she probably did genuinely block him, and the song's her forgiving him and unblocking him? Which is a fundamentally different interaction to be singing about. Also much less romantic than giving somebody your private phone number, somehow. Ah well.

I joke around, because other than that I have very little to say about this one. It's almost three minutes long, but feels very nothing-y. It's not bad, it's a very laid-back, perfectly competent bit of soul. I like the guitar and piano at the beginning, and the strings and horns throughout are also welcome additions, there's just enough to keep things moving along. William and Judy's voices blend pleasantly together, too, they're both well suited to the song. It's just that it doesn't do very much with all of this. Well over half the song's just the line baby, baby, baby, here's my private number. Repeat to the fade-out, and you've got a song that's not objectionable, but that I also don't think I'll necessarily remember for that long.

I will say, there was a moment, the first time we hit the chorus, where I did briefly wonder if I knew the song. But I think the familiarity is actually because it sounds like pretty much every other soul song out there. Nothing wrong with this one, and I like the snapshot into the sort of concerns people had dating in the era of landline telephones, but overall, Private Number did leave me a little cold. Nice to have a duet, though. More duets, please!

Favourite song of the bunch, I suppose: Private Number

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 8th January

Ooh, Stevie Wonder's back! Don't mind if I do...

For Once in My Life - Stevie Wonder (peaked at Number 3)

I don't think I've ever listened to this one until now? I've never really sat down and gone through all of Stevie Wonder's discography like I have with other artists, so that's not hugely surprising, but still, exciting to have something fresh to listen to. Hitting play, it's a promising start, with this bright, chirpy rhythm guitar, a bit of lead guitar peaking through, and then right in with Stevie's vocals, which are fantastic - big and emotional, but very smooth and laid-back, too.

The lyrics are sweet, because of course they are, describing how good it feels to have somebody in your life, after getting used to living alone. For once in my life I have someone who needs me, Stevie sings, someone I've needed so long / For once, unafraid, I can go where life leads me / And somehow I know I'll be strong. Big claims. And they keep coming. For once in my life I won't let sorrow hurt me / Not like it's hurt me before / For once, I have something I know won't desert me / I'm not alone anymore. There's something a bit sad about those ones, actually, you get a sense that Stevie's been hurt before, that this is all coming from a slightly paranoid place of having been ditched before, and painfully. But good for Stevie, getting over it and finding somebody new. I'm glad for him.

The more I listen, the more I'm also noticing that it also feels surprisingly musical theatre-adjacent, there's a lot of descending and ascending chromatic motion that feels very dramatic. To me, it's particularly obvious when the strings and horns come in, but it pops up in the vocal melody, too, this very classic, very Broadway sort of quality, I don't really know how to describe it, except kind of showy. And looking the song up, I can see that the songwriter, Ron Miller, was a Motown guy, but the song did also get offered to a bunch of more traditional crooner types like Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Which isn't musical theatre, but it does feel like it's got at least a foot back in that world of standards, the Great American Songbook and all that jazz.

I should also say, there are a bunch of nice touches that have nothing to do with musical theatre, too. The jazzy flute accents near the start are great, very fun, just this little late-60s period detail. There's a smooth sax solo in the middle that I'm also a big fan of, it's cheesy and muzak-adjacent but in a way that's just about retro enough to get away with it. And the bassline underpinning the whole thing's subtle but also very good, mixing it up and playing something subtly different in just about every bar, to the point where it's apparently got a bit of a reputation among bass players. Deceptively fancy. The only thing that doesn't really work for me are the backing singers, which I think are a bit overdone, especially at the end. But that aside, many nice stylish choices being made here.

Yeah, I'm not sure this is ground-breaking or earth-shaking, but I'd for sure put this on a playlist to have on round the house, or whatever. It's chill and very laid back, happy and uplifting without being too intense, and there's a solid core of just quality music to it, it's an enjoyable listen. If you like Stevie Wonder, you will enjoy this song, it feels like him doing all his usual things very competently. Which is all you can really ask. Solid job, Stevie.

Favourite song of the respectably listenable bunch: Someone Who Needs Me

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 1st January

1969! We're going to the Moon this year, baby! Heck yeah! Feels crazy to be in the final year of the 1960s, I remember when they were all shiny and new, and here we are about to wrap them up. Wild times!

Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield (peaked at Number 9)

Kicking us off in style for the occasion, it's Dusty! And may I say, this is Dusty perhaps at her coolest. From the very get go, it's all shimmering guitar, strummed chords low and menacing, a subtle bit of percussion in the background. There are some horns later on, but even they're cool, lazily swung. Throw in some relatively minimal gospel-style backing vocals and you've got something that's a slow burn sort of track. It's not that it doesn't get more intense towards the end, but there's a simmer to it, a very steady, controlled build.

All this is used to tell the story of Billy-Ray, a preacher's son, who'd come along when his father visited his parishioners, would go walking with Dusty: Then he'd look into my eyes, Lord knows to my surprise / The only one who could ever reach me / Was the son of a preacher man / The only boy who could ever teach me / Was the son of a preacher man. This feels kind of cliché, the stock character of the rebellious minister's kid, acting out behind his dad's disapproving back, a real forbidden love-type scenario. There's a salaciousness to it all, a sense of a scandal playing out in the tight-knit world of a small-town church flock, and with the pastor's kid, no less.

Except rather than playing it as particularly exciting or titillating, Dusty to my ears sounds more jaded than anything. It's not bitter, exactly, but there's a detachment to it, a coolness. This isn't Dusty in the white-hot thrill of love, this is Dusty looking back at a childhood romance, something from her youth that she looks back on fondly, clearly, but not without a touch of cynicism, hence the description of Billy-Ray quite clearly trying to get into her pants: when he started sweet-talkin' to me / He'd come and tell me everything is alright / He'd kiss and tell me everthing is alright / Can I get away again tonight? I see you there, Billy. I see what you're doing. And yet, at the end of the day, it's also presented as a bit of a coming-of-age for the both of them, learning from each other's knowing / Lookin' to see how much we've grown. Dusty learnt to love from this preacher's son, and it's still part of her today, she remembers it all so very well.

It's all very American. I mean, even Dusty's accent here's become much more American that it ever used to be. Plus there's all the little Motown and gospel touches - fitting for a song about a preacher's kid - and beyond that, the very concept just feels distinctly American, somehow - perhaps because "son of a C of E vicar" just isn't that glamorous? Whatever the case, the song feels very American. And yup, it was apparently written with Aretha Franklin in mind, which I can absolutely hear, now that I know. Alas, the track never made it to Aretha, but it did get picked up by Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, who thought it might work for this British singer, who'd just come over to the US to make an album with more of a southern soul sound. The result was the album Dusty in Memphis, a deliberately very stylised, American-sounding record. And front and centre, this track, slinky and disaffected and way too cool for school.

Something's Happening - Herman's Hermits (6)

And then this, a track that falls into the same oddly specific category as the Tremeloes' Suddenly You Love Me and My Little Lady, both of which started life as Italian pop hits that did moderately well in a local song contest, only to be given a completely new set of lyrics in order to "translate" it into a bunch of languages, including but not limited to English, but also French, where it was covered by Joe Dassin on his fabulous 1969 self-titled album, also sometimes called Les Champs-Elysées.

This is an album I know and really like, and so naturally it's with a certain amount of mixed feelings that I hit approach this one. Because it's a very nostalgic tune for me, I used to listen to some of these while I was learning French. Heck, I used to use this one to help me teach French. Because Joe's version is called Le petit pain au chocolat ("The Little Pain au Chocolat") and it tells this delightfully silly story about a man who doesn't realise that the girl who makes the pains au chocolat in his local bakery is a) pretty and b) into him, because he's too short-sighted to actually see her face. Fortunately, he gets some glasses, which in turn help him get the girl, and they go on to have a bunch of pretty, short-sighted kids. It's cute, and crucially it also contains a lot of simple verbs in the imperfect tense. So you know. Ideal teaching material. I like to think my Year 10s enjoyed it, as much as Year 10s will admit to liking anything.

All of which is to say, I have a lot of inherited affection for the wistful, sweet tune here, the daft but fun ay-yay-yay-yay refrain, the rather retro marimba that Herman's Hermits have chosen to deploy, all of which feel very familiar and comforting to me. What I don't love are the English lyrics, which are almost as twee and cutesy as the French, but much less specific about it. Gone is the funny little vignette, in place of lyrics that are bland and milquetoast, Herman and the Hermits singing much less charmingly about how something is happening / And it started happening when you walked by, or how something is happening to me / And I only hope the same thing is happening to you. Which is fine, but it does lack a certain oomph, and makes the Hermits look inarticulate and kind of emotionally stunted, as they spend the whole song completely unable to put into words what this thing is except that there's nothing they can do about it, that they know it happens to other people too, and that they're kind of confused by it all, but maybe in a good way? It's infuriating, you just want to shake them. At least Joe's protagonist had the excuse of not having his glasses on. Herman and co are just idiots, apparently.

Man, this is just making me want to go and listen to more Joe Dassin. Go listen to some Joe Dassin, y'all. Especially if you know any French, he's very charming. Sadly, I don't think I can name him as my fave. Which leaves us with Dusty, who was also very cool this week, to be fair to her. The move to Memphis has clearly agreed with her. A solid, convincing start to 1969.

Favourite song of the bunch: Son of a Preacher Man