Ballads

230. ‘Release Me’, by Engelbert Humperdinck

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An unassuming intro leads us, soft and gentle, into a swaying lullaby of a latest chart-topper. Please release me, Let me go, For I don’t love you, Anymore…

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Release Me, by Engelbert Humperdinck (his 1st of two #1s)

6 weeks, from 2nd March – 13th April 1967

Sigh. What has happened to the charts in recent weeks? We’ve gone from the pinnacle of the swinging sixties to the easy-listening doldrums… Jim Reeves, Tom Jones, Petula Clark (who’s fab, but still…) and now this. A new level of schmaltz.

I have found a new love dear… And I will always want her near… The one redeeming thing about this record is that it’s not a love song. It should be; but it’s really a break-up plea. Which gives it a slightly OTT, unintentionally comic feel. Especially with lines like Her lips are warm while yours are cold… (Ouch!) Such is the strength of the plea, I’m assuming he’s singing to his wife, and needs a divorce. Otherwise, why doesn’t he just dump her…? Or is he just too much of a gentleman to do a caddish thing like that?

When the backing singers come in, it really is a step too far. So let’s tune out for a moment, and focus on the most interesting thing about this record (apart from the singer’s name, but we’ll get to that in a bit.) ‘Release Me’, famously, held The Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’ / ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ double-‘A’ off the top-spot. For a fortnight, one of the most innovative and respected pop singles ever was outsold by just one disc. Engelbert’s.

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He turns it up a notch or two for the final chorus. We move from crooning to belting. He gives the final So….. some real welly. It goes without saying that, yes, he sings it well. I feel I’ve written that quite a lot recently. And frankly, it’s not enough to save this one. It’s like saying that a footballer kicks a ball well. He’s still got to find the goal! And the slow pace and pure blandness of this record means it’s one that bobbles well wide of the post.

Unlike ‘This Is My Song’, which just sounded old, ‘Release Me’ was a (fairly) old song. First written and released in 1949, and given the treatment by Patti Page, The Everly Brothers and Dean Martin among others. It goes without saying that Humperdinck’s version is the best-known. It was, inevitably, the highest-selling single of 1967.

And what of the elephant in the room? That name. Engelbert Humperdinck was a stage name, his real one being Arnold Dorsey. But, amazingly, it is an actual name. Engelbert Humperdinck I was a German composer from the turn of the century. Humperdinck II just wholesale borrowed the name – which seems cheeky to me. He was managed by the same guy as Tom Jones, and ‘Release Me’ was his breakthrough hit. His post-sixties career is pretty interesting, but I’ll hold off on the full bio as, joy of joys, he has another huge chart-topper coming up shortly…

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229. ‘This Is My Song’, by Petula Clark

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This next #1 has an intro that really sets a scene. A laundry-strung alley in old Napoli. Candles. Red-chequered tablecloth. The strings flutter. The guitar is lightly-plucked. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza-pie…

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This Is My Song, by Petula Clark (her 2nd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 16th February – 2nd March 1967

Nope. Wrong song. This one goes: Why is my heart so light, Why are the stars so bright…? Questions, questions. I’m sure you’ve already guessed why. Why is the sky so blue, Since the hour I met you…? Petula’s in love. And so she runs through various clichés: Flowers are smiling, stars are shining… We know we’re getting a big ol’ chorus, but she builds up to it very slowly, keeping us waiting… I know why the world is smiling… It hears the same old story, Through all eternity…

Finally it comes. Love… This is my song… It’s a chorus made for movie-soundtracks. It’s outrageously cheesy, but undeniable. Don’t try to argue with it. Just let yourself get swept along by it. The world, Cannot be wrong, If in this world, There is you… It’s timeless stuff. By the solo, with its Bierfest horn section, I’m sold. I love it. Here is a song, My serenade to you…

Of the last six chart-toppers, half could be described as sentimental schmaltz. ‘Distant Drums’, ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’, and now this. But ‘This Is My Song’ is different. I’m not sure how, but it is. Somewhere in there, buried deep in the swaying, woozy rhythm, the spirit of the sixties remains. Somehow, it manages to be quite sexy, in amongst all the cheese…

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I may be biased. Petula Clark was one of my first true loves, ever since ‘I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love’ – to which ‘This Is My Song’ was the follow-up – featured on a ‘60s Hits cassette on heavy-rotation in my parents’ car. Not that I listen to her very often now, but… This is a woman who was a child star – a ‘singing sweetheart’ and mascot to WWII troops, whose hit first records were released in the 1940s, who first charted alongside the likes of Vera Lynn and Doris Day, whose two #1s – ‘Sailor’ and this – bookend the swinging sixties, who caused scandal in the USA by (gasp!) touching Harry Belafonte on the arm, who is as comfortable singing in French, German or Italian as she is in English, and who still performs to this day, aged eighty-six! (She’s currently playing in ‘Mary Poppins’ in the West End.) She is, to apply an over-used but in this case completely appropriate term, a legend.

Meanwhile, the story of this record is almost as interesting. It is not, though it sounds it, based on an old Neapolitan folk tune. It had been written just the year before, for the soundtrack of the film ‘A Countess From Hong Kong’, by one Charlie Chaplin. Yep, that Charlie Chaplin. The film was set in the thirties, and so Chaplin wanted a song that would invoke the sound of that time. I’d say he managed it. To give it that period finish, he also wanted Al Jolson to record it. Except – small problem – Jolson had died in1950. So, he asked Petula Clark to record it instead. Clark, apparently, hated the lyrics…

Anyway, I enjoyed that. And if you didn’t enjoy this one, if you thought it was just a bit too much, too overblown and old-fashioned, just you wait till you hear what’s up next…

227. ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’, by Tom Jones

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It’s become a bit of theme recently – every so often we take a pause from pop music’s race into the future to enjoy a good, old-fashioned ballad. First with Ken Dodd, then Jim Reeves, and now Tom from the Valleys.

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Green, Green Grass of Home, by Tom Jones (his 2nd of three #1s)

7 weeks, from 1st December 1966 – 19th January 1967

A soft, swaying intro precedes a tale of a man returning home, from a long time away. The old home town looks the same, As I step down from the train… And doesn’t Tom sing it well? There’s something in the Welsh waters… Why are they such good singers? Why is it Welsh Male Voice choirs, and not Geordie Male Voice choirs?

He runs towards his long-lost love, Mary: Hair of gold, And lips like cherries… And then he heads home: There’s that old oak tree, That I used to play on… It’s a heart-warming song for Christmas. One for all the family. Yes, it’s good to touch, The green green grass of home… Like most Tom Jones songs, it helps if you’re a bit drunk. I love the saloon-bar piano, that really adds a ‘last-call’ vibe. And, also like most Tom Jones songs, it’s a karaoke classic. Not quite ‘Delilah’, but getting there.

I love a song that tells a story, verse by verse. Just where has this man been all this time…? And ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’, like all good stories, has one hell of a twist. We break for a spoken-word interlude, in which the singer reveals that it was all a dream. And, who’s that? Why it’s the guard… And there’s a sad, old padre, On and on we’ll walk at daybreak, Again I’ll touch, The green green grass of home… Yep, plot twist: he’s getting executed.

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I love it. Either he’s been wrongfully convicted, which only increases the power of the earlier verses, or you’ve spent the last two minutes sympathising with a murderer. The little piano riff to end is this song’s version of a ‘badoom-tish.’ And I’m similarly in two minds about this record as a whole. On the one hand, it’s mawkish, sentimental mush. On the other, it’s a great one for belting out in the shower.

And to be fair, this was a mega-hit. Seven weeks at #1 is longer than any record in the past three and a half-years, since The Beatles’ ‘From Me to You’. And, as I mentioned earlier, I doubt that this disc being released over the festive season hurt its chances. The idea of a ‘Christmas Number One’ wasn’t really a thing this early in the charts, but I do wonder if the success of ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ set the tone for later, similarly saccharine, festive hits.

As for Sir Tom, similar to his first #1, ‘It’s Not Unusual’, I think we have to look at him as existing separately from his chart contemporaries. His other big sixties hits included ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ and ‘Help Yourself’ – nothing baroquey or folky, or Beat-poppy about them. But… If you’re never in fashion you’ll never be out of fashion. Maybe it’s this refusal to follow trends that’s allowed him all his comebacks: his Prince covers in the eighties, and his huge resurgence when I was in high-school. Looking back, how on earth did a near sixty-year old man singing ‘Sex Bomb’ become such a thing…? And he will hit the top-spot once more, briefly, in forty-two years’ time. Which, unsurprisingly, is by far the biggest gap between #1 singles, ever.

224. ‘Distant Drums’, by Jim Reeves

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What to make of this, then…? Just as we were getting into a groove at the top of the charts – a rocking, modish, soulful groove with cool and forward-facing #1s following similarly cool and forward-facing #1s – The Kinks, The Blue Flames, Chris Farlowe and ‘Eleanor Rigby’, a curveball is thrown our way.

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Distant Drums, by Jim Reeves (his 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 22nd September – 27th October 1966

Gentle drums, a swaying rhythm, a crooner’s voice… I hear the sound, Of distant drums, Far away, Far away… It’s the sort of country-ish ballad that was ten-a-penny in the late fifties and early sixties. (I’d perhaps call this one country-calypso, if that’s at all possible…) But it’s a sign of how far popular music has come in a very short time that ‘Distant Drums’ sticks out like a sore thumb in late 1966.

It’s a sentimental song, about a man who hears the distant drums of war… Then I must go, And you must stay… And so he begs his beloved to marry him before he gets shipped off: Let’s share all the time we can before it’s too late… If you love me Mary, Marry me… (Gettit? ‘Mary’ – ‘Marry’?) It’s sweet. Old-fashioned. Your gran would love it. I am certain, even without checking, that Daniel O’Donnell has covered this.

Why on earth it spent over a month at the top of the charts I do not know. But there’s no need to make a big fuss about it. Yes, it’s nothing like the brilliant hits that went right before, but I’m not a snob. There’s room for all in this parish. Jim Reeves sings it beautifully, in a very understated way. And it’s worth noting that exactly one year ago, Ken Dodd was at the top of the charts – for five weeks as well, no less – with the similarly saccharine ‘Tears’. And as with Doddy, ‘Distant Drums’ was, despite the strong competition, the biggest-selling single of the year! Maybe there was something in the autumn air…

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Or maybe it was because, as I’ve just discovered, Jim Reeves was dead. We have our third ever posthumous #1! But, unlike Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran’s swansongs, Reeves had been dead for a while… A light aircraft crash, in a storm, in July 1964. Well over two years before this record hit the top spot… A bit late for a tribute, then. One other explanation is timing: that the song’s theme suddenly became prescient with escalation of the Vietnam War. Jim Reeves – ‘Gentleman Jim’ as he was known – had had plenty of chart hits before this one, both alive and dead, and so perhaps it isn’t a huge shock that one would catch the public’s imagination like this.

Whatever the reason, it means we get a little interlude in our rundown of the nation’s biggest selling songs. I’m not going to pretend that hearing this song has been a highlight of my day. If it had come in, say, 1962, in a version by Frank Ifield, I would have probably had far less patience with it… Moving on, then, without any further ado…

216. ‘Strangers in the Night’, by Frank Sinatra

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After the all-out nihilism of ‘Paint It, Black’, it’s time for a slight change of pace. A fifty year old crooner – a legend, even by this point in his career – with a song about the joys of a chance meeting.

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Strangers in the Night, by Frank Sinatra (his 2nd of three #1s)

3 weeks, from 2nd – 23rd June 1966

Soaring strings, a gentle sway, and Ol’ Blue Eyes… Strangers in the night, Exchanging glances, Wond’ring in the night, What were the chances… It’s timeless, traditional pop. A similar, if much classier, version of Ken Dodd’s mega-hit ‘Tears’ from the previous year. A record that might have been #1 in 1946, 56, 66, 76… you get the drift. By this point in his career, a good twenty years since he graduated from teen-idol status, Sinatra was not about to reinvent himself as a folk singer.

Strangers in the night, Two lonely people, We were strangers in the night… And, yes, there’s something in the sweep of the violins and the softness of the horns, that conjures up an image of two people, in New York, entering a darkened bar for last orders… By the end of the song, they’ve been together for years. Things turned out alright, you see, for strangers in the night.

Frank Sinatra is a weird proposition for me. He’s old, too old even for my parents to have listened to him. He released his first single in 1939, and he would be a hundred and four were he still around today. And yet, the songs are there. They reach you anyway, regardless of whether you grew up hearing him. ‘Fly Me to The Moon’, ‘New York, New York’, ‘My Way’… He’s also a weird proposition for me as I’m not convinced that he was all that great a singer. I mean, he obviously was – the way he holds the yooouuuuu before the chorus here is good – but at the same time he talks his way through certain lines. The Ever since that night… line, for example.

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We have heard from Frank before in this countdown – going on twelve years ago, when he took ‘Three Coins in the Fountain’ to the top. Now, twelve years between #1 hits is a long time in any era of the charts; but this gap, straddling rock ‘n’ roll and the beat revolution, is particularly impressive. And this is the Sinatra that everybody knows, the Sinatra that wannabes cover on talent shows… the vast majority of his best known hits come from the sixties. Try naming one of his bobby-soxer hits from the early forties…

I love the pause, before we sweep into the final verse of ‘Strangers in the Night’. It’s cinematic, cocky Sinatra. And then perhaps the most famous bit of this song: do bee do bee dooo, da-da-da-da, yayayaya… So famous that it apparently inspired ‘Scooby Do.’ He sounds like your uncle, drunk at a wedding, forgetting the words… And then it hits you. That’s why Sinatra was, and still is, so popular. Because drunk uncles at weddings can just about pull off an impression!

Sinatra, though, hated this song. He couldn’t stand the record that returned him to the top of the charts after a decade. And he wasn’t ever subtle about it, either. It was ‘a piece of shit’ and ‘the worst fucking song (he’d) ever heard.’ You wonder, then, if the do-bee-do skat is simply him giving up. (Which makes the whole song even more glorious, if you ask me…)

Whatever the reason – the quality of the song, the iconic doo-be-doos, Sinatra’s vehement hatred of it – ‘Strangers in the Night’ became one of his biggest hits, one of his signatures, a song that he would have to bite the bullet on and perform every night for the rest of his life. I’d also suggest that his daughter hitting the tops of charts around the world just a few months earlier wasn’t bad publicity, either. Not that it matters. An artist of Sinatra’s stature needs to feature in this countdown. And I’m glad that he does.

Catch up here:

213. ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’, by Dusty Springfield

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Before we get going with this next number one single, I have to go on record and state that only allowing Dusty Springfield, the greatest British female singer ever, one measly week at the top of the singles charts, is one of the British people’s greatest embarrassments. Hang your heads in shame, British record-buying public!

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You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, by Dusty Springfield (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 28th April – 5th May 1966

Now that’s off my chest… To the song. And what a song. I’d like to follow my earlier statement with the caveat that, if you were going to give Dusty Springfield, the greatest British female singer ever, only one #1 single, then you could do a lot worse than allowing that single to be ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’.

The intro sets a scene. It’s a throwback of an intro, straight from the melodramatic pre-rock days. It’s a Shirley Bassey intro. An intro you’d make up as a piss-take of a Bond theme. Horns blast, cymbals crash, and a choir welcomes the coming apocalypse… And then… Dusty. Whose voice, after all that, sounds kind of small.

But what a voice. I’ll have to remind myself that this is a post on ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’, the two hundred and thirteenth UK #1 single, not a post on the life and times of Dusty Springfield. But she did have a voice on her. When I said, I needed you… You said, You would always stay… It wasn’t me who changed, But you… And now you’ve gone… Away… It’s default Dusty – heartbroken, but defiant. Nobody does defiant heartbreak like her. And then comes the chorus, with it’s very rational approach to a broken relationship: You don’t have to say you love me, Just be close at hand… (For years, I though it was ‘just because you can’, which, to be fair, would also work.) You don’t have to stay forever, I will understand…

I love the dramatic way the second verse comes in… Left alone!… and the violin flourish that accompanies it. And then the two Believe me’s that prelude the final, sweeping chorus. And the key change. Because a song like this simply couldn’t finish without a key change. God, it’s a good record. I want to name it as one of the best yet. Except, my next recap is ages off. Damn. I’ve always felt that it’s a frustratingly short record, even though it comes in at not much under three minutes. They could have stuck another verse in. But no. They didn’t need to. It’s perfect as it is. It’s a complete side-step from the predominant sounds of the mid-sixties, a record that could have been a hit at any time. If Adele released a cover of it tomorrow, it would still work.

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And that’s it. One song. One week. Dusty Springfield as chart-topping artist. It’s nowhere near enough, but at least she got it. And, of course, her career is not defined by this one hit. It’s just one of her sixteen UK Top 20 singles. There’s ‘I Only Want to Be With You’, her 1963 debut, ‘Stay Awhile’, ‘In the Middle of Nowhere’, ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself’ (brilliantly covered by The White Stripes)… And then there’s her Memphis records, ‘Son of a Preacher Man’, and ‘Breakfast in Bed’, her cover of ‘The Look of Love’, one of the most sensual recordings ever made. And then there’s her late-career revival, courtesy of The Pet Shop Boys, culminating in the superb ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This’ (she loved a good long song title, did our Dusty.)

But my favourite Dusty is the one that belted out ballads like ‘Losing You’, ‘All I See Is You’, ‘I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten’, and, of course, this. ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ was, apparently, based on an Italian pop hit from the year before, which had reduced Dusty to tears upon hearing it. Her song-writing team put together English lyrics for the melody, and she allegedly took forty-seven takes before she was happy with her vocals. The diva!

I better end this post before I go overboard on the links… One final thing, though. Dusty’s career was famously damaged by a 1970 interview in which she announced she was gay (‘bent’, in her own words.) For much of seventies and eighties she battled with alcoholism and self-harm. And listening back to the lyrics of ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’, you notice there are no pronouns used other than ‘you’ and ‘me’. And then you listen to the refrain: Believe me, Believe me, I can’t help but love you… And you realise that you are perhaps listening to a gay love song, which hit #1 in a time when it was socially unacceptable, if not illegal, to be that way. A powerful subtext, to an already very powerful record. Ladies and gentlemen: Dusty Springfield.

Catch up here:

211. ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’, by The Walker Brothers

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Back to business, then. And not a bad record to get back to! Though it starts with an intro that is as folksy as anything we’ve had so far. Very of its time. Guitars round the campfire, a tambourine shakes… I’m getting Seekers flashbacks. Am I about to be underwhelmed by The Walker Brothers, for the second time…?

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The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, by The Walker Brothers (their 2nd and final #1)

4 weeks, from 17th March – 14th April 1966

Of course not. Because in come the drums. Suddenly it’s not a folk song – it’s gorgeous, string-drenched, Wall of Sound-at-its-finest, pop. Loneliness, Is a cloak you wear… A spaghetti Western lone whistle… Because, why not? A deep shade of blue, Is always there…

Then it all comes together. The drums cascade, the voices swirl together… The sun ain’t gonna shine anymore, The moon ain’t gonna rise in the sky… It’s a song about being dumped, essentially. About being sad and lonesome. But never has sadness sounded so appealing. By the time we get to the Bay-yay-ay-bay! I’m sold. Sign me up for the misery!

It’s a brilliantly melodramatic record. All the things that I didn’t think worked on The Walker’s 1st chart-topper – the slightly knowing ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’ – come together here. I think it’s because the music is so compelling, so lush and enveloping, that the OTT lyrics work. I criticised Scott Walker’s crooning on that record, but I love it here. It all culminates in the middle-eight: Lonely, Without you, Baby… through to a glorious I can’t go o-o-o-on…! It’s a song for wallowing in, with a bottle of wine and the curtains drawn.

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Everything about ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ points towards one man: Phil Spector. He must, you think, have produced this record. It sounds like the inside of his head. But, no. One Johnny Franz was on production duties. And yet the debt is clear. This is a Phil Spector record, even if he was nowhere near the studio.

It all builds to a climax, with the layered vocals on the fade-out working brilliantly. And it ends on a high, leaving you uplifted despite the subject matter. This could be a sad, depressing song, if you stripped it all back, but it isn’t. Thank God. It is ten, twenty times, better than the Walker’s previous chart-topper, and an early contender for best record in my next recap. It’s that good.

Interestingly, this isn’t the original version of ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna…’ It had been recorded a year earlier by Frankie Valli. His version sounds a little heavy-handed, but surprisingly similar to this one. It, however, made no impact on the charts. It’s also been covered by Cher, in the ‘90s. She is perhaps the only person who could make this song sound more OTT than Scott Walker…

This was the peak of The Walker Brother’s success, their popularity such that their fan-club allegedly had more members than The Beatles’. They had several further hits, and yet disbanded in 1968, largely due to Scott Walker’s dissatisfaction with being seen as a mere teen-idol. I can’t say I’ve listened to that much of his solo output, though I do know it has a reputation for being ‘challenging’… That’s probably what’s putting me off. It’s also been very influential: David Bowie, Pulp, Radiohead, The Arctic Monkeys… the list is a long one. He passed away in March of this year. John Walker had died in 2011, leaving Gary as the sole surviving ‘brother’.

But we’ll leave them here. Bowing out with their crowning glory. A song I knew was good, but hadn’t realised quite how good. Yet another supreme mid-sixties pop moment. Keep ‘em coming!

Catch up with all the Number Ones so far, here:

204. ‘Tears’, by Ken Dodd

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The best thing about a pop chart, about a list of the best-selling songs in any given week, is that anything can, technically, get to the top. Get enough people to buy it, download it, stream it, whatever, and you get yourself a #1 single.

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Tears, by Ken Dodd (his 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 30th September – 4th November 1965

Which means, try as you might to apply some kind of sense to the ebb and flow of number ones, to christen new eras and to identify the overall ‘sound’ of a time, you’ll always get anomalies. Which means… In amongst The Beatles and The Stones, The Byrds and the Baroque, we have comedian Ken Dodd, covering a sentimental ballad, first written in 1929.

Tears for souvenirs, Are all you left me… Mem’ries of a love, You never meant… The rhythm floats by like a placid river, the guitar trills, the strings swirl… Tears have been my only, Consolation… But tears can’t mend a broken heart, I must confess… He sings it perfectly well, but not spectacularly. I’m picturing a busker on the banks of the Seine, accompanied by an accordion (this would totally work in French, and was actually based on an old French aria from the 1870s.)

Is it a parody? A novelty? I don’t know. What it definitely is is a throwback. This is pure music hall. It’s not cool and it doesn’t care. A record for your gran. It’s almost not worth writing any more about ‘Tears.’ It is what it is. Move on.

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But. But, but, but… That really wouldn’t be fair. Because this isn’t a flash in the pan, one-week wonder. It’s a disc that lodged itself in at the top for five whole weeks – a length of time reserved solely these days for The Beatles. It was the biggest selling record of 1965. Let that sink in… In the year of ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’’, ‘Help!’, ‘Satisfaction’, and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’; Ken Dodd’s ‘Tears’ outsold them all. It was the 3rd best-selling single of the entire decade, the only non-Beatles single in the Top 5. As of 2017, it still sat in 39th place on the list of best-selling singles ever. The middle of the road is always the best place from which to sell a record.

And then there’s the man behind the song. The voice that guides us through this tale of heartbreak and regret. Sir Ken Dodd, of the tickling sticks and the Diddy Men. Of Saturday night telly, Christmas pantos and the Blackpool lights. Of a type of humour and a style of show that was uniquely British. I know some of my readers are not British and… I don’t know if I can even begin to explain him. Look him up. I’m a bit young to have really been ‘into’ him, but my mum liked him. I think that this was the first record she ever bought… He died last year, aged ninety, having performed his final stand-up show just a few months earlier.

Not that this was his only musical success. He was a genuine chart presence throughout the sixties, with several other Top Tens. And I have to admit that, as I listen to ‘Tears’ now for the seventh or eighth time, with a glass (or two) of wine as I write, that this is a pretty nice song. A song that actually fits in quite well with the strings, and the lush production, found in the more ‘respectable’ pop songs of the time. (Plus – whisper it – I think I might be enjoying it more than the previous, overwrought #1, ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’…)

Anyway, before I get too carried away, and claim ‘Tears’ to be the most underrated pop song of the decade, or something, I’ll finish. And glancing forward… Ah yes, normal service is about to be resumed, with a vengeance.

197. ‘Crying in the Chapel’, by Elvis Presley

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Well, well, well. Look who’s back. The man with the most #1 singles ever (then and now), whose every release was once guaranteed several weeks at the top of the British pop charts, assumes his rightful place. Bow down to The King.

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Crying in the Chapel, by Elvis Presley (his 15th of twenty-one #1s)

1 week, from 17th – 24th June / 1 week from 1st – 8th July 1965 (2 weeks total)

He’s taken a break from his ever-diminishing run of lame movie-soundtracks, to get all holy on us. Elvis does gospel. You saw me crying in the chapel, The tears I shed were tears of joy… he croons, over a simple guitar strum – reminiscent of ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ – and a tinkling piano – reminiscent of ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’. I know the meaning of contentment, Now I’m happy with the Lord…

This is by far the most overtly religious chart-topper yet. In fact, the only others to have referenced The Almighty and his Gang were ‘Answer Me’, way back in 1953, and ‘Mary’s Boy Child’, from Christmas 1957. But this isn’t a preachy, buttoned-up number. This is Elvis we’re talking about, and he’s in his element. He whispers, he purrs, he croons, while the way he lowers his voice for the …just to sing and, Praise the Lord… line would get even the most pious of nuns a little hot under the collar.

No, Elvis is enjoying himself here. I once read a description – I can’t remember where – of Elvis’s gospel records as being sung as if ‘The King was trying to blow the pearly gates from their hinges’. You can imagine him striding up to God and asking him to make some room on the throne…. But not here. Elvis keeps it low-key on this disc. Actually, his vocals aside, it’s pretty dull. I always skipped this one back when I had his Greatest Hits on heavy rotation.

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But it is in keeping with what has been a very eclectic 1965. We’ve had ballads, country-pop, Latin soul, some cabaret-pop and some Phil Spector Wall of Sound gloss. And now some gospel. While it’s easy to say ‘well, only someone like Elvis could take this to #1’, bear in mind he hasn’t been drowning in hit records recently. This is his first chart-topper for two years; while he won’t reappear again until the 1970s. His recent hits before this one included ‘Bossa Nova Baby’ (#13) and ‘Do the Clam’ (#19). This record got to the top for reasons beyond Elvis’s fading star-power. Maybe it was Christian-power…? Church-goers heading out in force to get what is basically a hymn-in-disguise to the top of the charts? It worked for Cliff in the ‘80s and ‘90s…

It would also be remiss to suggest that Elvis was attempting some kind of reinvention here. He was always, in fairness, a deeply religious man, and had released his first gospel album, ‘His Hand in Mine’, years before. (‘Crying in the Chapel’ was actually recorded way back in 1960, but for some reason never saw the light of day until five years had passed.) He’d go on to release several more before his death, including the seminal ‘How Great Thou Art’ in 1967. Nope, it seems that this was simply one of his few gospel singles that caught on with the general public. It’s a million miles away from the swinging sixties, and you know what, that’s fine for a couple of weeks.

It’s interesting, looking at Elvis’s discography, to see how he seems to have been much more appreciated by British audiences come the mid-sixties. Between ‘Surrender’ in mid-1961, and now, he scored just one Billboard Hot 100 #1 – ‘Good Luck Charm’. Across the Atlantic he racked up seven, including this one. You can’t help but feel that Britain got this the wrong way around – all the early classics, your ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, were US chart-toppers. Whereas in the UK we waited until the ‘Rock-a-Hula-Baby’ phase to go truly Elvis-mad. Definitive proof of this, if it were needed, can be found in the fact that the abominable ‘Wooden Heart’, a 6-week UK #1, didn’t see the light of day in the States. The Americans got that one spot on!

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186. ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”, by The Righteous Brothers

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

Oh baby, baby… For our next chart-topper, we take a step into the realm of the super-cool. An empty stage… A sole spotlight shining its beam through the dusty air… A mic on a stand… Thick curtains part, and on step two men…

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You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’, by The Righteous Brothers (their 1st of two #1s)

2 weeks, from 4th – 18th February 1965

And then that voice. Sonorous. Rich. Velvety and comforting, but authoritative too. You never close your eyes, Anymore when I kiss, Your li-ips… It’s a voice that is somehow both low and high within the same line – sometimes within the same word. And there’s no tenderness like before, In your fingerti-ips… A voice that goes from velvety soft to a gravelly rasp in seconds (see that Baby! Something beautiful’s dying! line.) Said voice is Bill Medley’s, and it’s unlike anything we’ve heard before in this countdown. Apparently, at the time, it was so deep and treacly that people thought they were listening to the record on the wrong speed. I’d rate it instantly alongside Roy Orbison and Shirley Bassey as the best voice to have topped the charts, up to now. It’s a voice that it’s almost impossible to mimic… Anyone can pretend to be Elvis, or Mick Jagger, and just about get away with it. Not this voice.

The backing music is way off in the background, too – a softly shaken out drum and some ethereal strings. This record, to start with anyway, is all about the voice. Apparently Bobby Hatfield, the other Righteous Brother (they weren’t biological brothers – something I just found out…) was pissed off that they weren’t starting the song by singing together. But you’d have to say the producer got it right on that front. That producer, by the way…? One Phil Spector.

Hatfield soon gets his moment, though. Come the chorus, the two voices ring out: You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin, Now it’s gone, gone, gone, Woah-woah-oh… Then they intertwine for the superb crescendo that leads to the final chorus. You know, the bit that starts with an angelic Baby, baby, I’ll get down on my knees for you… and soars into call-and-response Babys! and Pleases! and I need your loves! It is pop perfection… as trite as that phrase sounds. Time-capsule pop, as I coined it in an earlier post. Two voices that are as good as The Everly Brothers; but that are completely different too.

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In keeping with more recent #1s, ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ is a very sophisticated song. It’s pop for adults. A world away from the teeny-bopping Mersey sound that encapsulated 1963-’64. It’s perhaps the first example of the American response to the British invasion – a record, like The Supremes from a few weeks earlier, which has that US gloss. You just know that the Righteous Brothers had perfectly white teeth…

Some of this is to do with the lyrics. With lines like And now your starting to, Criticise little things that I do… it’s looking at love in a way that Herman’s Hermits, or Billy J. Kramer, or even The Beatles, weren’t. But it’s more to do with Spector’s soaring, crashing, grandiose Wall of Sound production. The strings. The drums. The stereo sound that fills the room. I wrote a post recently on how it was a crime that ‘Be My Baby’ didn’t make #1. But, while that is a peerless pop disc; I hadn’t noticed that this record was coming up. I knew that this was a good song – a classic – but I had forgotten (or perhaps had never realised) just how good it was. Listening to it now… Oh boy. Phil Spector may be many things (most of them awful), but nobody – nobody I say! – knew their way around a pop record like him back in his heyday.

Like most eighties kids, my first exposure to ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ was in, ahem, ‘Top Gun’. Maverick and Goose, all in white, serenading Kelly McGillis… And this is just one of the ways in which this song has grown its own legend. It’s been covered by everyone: Cilla Black, Dionne Warwick, Hall & Oates… It caused Brian Wilson to tell the writers – Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil – that he had been “ready to quit the music business, but this has inspired me to write again”… We are in Rolling Stone Top 10, BMI most-played songs of all time territory here. We won’t meet many bigger songs than this one as we move on. Finally, and perhaps most excitingly of all, mixed in amongst the backing singers on the disc, was an up-and-coming young woman by the name of Cher.

We will hear from The Righteous Brothers again. But not for a long time, and in somewhat specific circumstances. It’s a lifetime away – one of the biggest gaps between #1 singles in history. This was, then, to all intents and purposes, their only chart-topping hit in their ‘lifetime’. Relish it, appreciate it… Just be grateful that it exists…

Catch up with the previous #1 singles here: