Pop

198. ‘I’m Alive’, by The Hollies

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Finally, after all the recent gospel, jazz and country, we’re back on track. This is more like it. This is what the sixties were meant to sound like…

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I’m Alive, by The Hollies (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 24th June – 1st July / 2 weeks from 8th – 22nd July 1965 (3 weeks total)

This record is like a ‘Best of the Sixties’ compilation distilled down into a two and a half minute song. Let’s take it step by step… The intro is pure Merseybeat – light, chiming guitars – with a generous side order of Doo-Wop. Doo- doodoodoodoodoodoo–doo… Then in comes in a husky, Lennon-ish voice: Did you ever see a man with no heart, Baby that was me… It’s all about a man who had never lived before, until his girl came along. It’s an upbeat and positive song. A song that puts you in a good mood. He’s alive!

The build-up to the chorus is very Beatles-y. Think a milder version of their ‘Twist and Shout’. Now I can breathe, I can see, I can touch, I can feel… Each line ascends ahead of the previous one, until the singer punches the chorus out: I never felt like this… I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive! End, and repeat.

Then the solo, which is a bit more hard hitting. Think tinny Kinks’ guitars with a bit of Stones swagger thrown in. And by the end, they’ve gone full on Who – with Keith Moon style drum fills and a frenetic rock-out to the end. Sprinkle the tiniest hint of psychedelica in the guitar reverb, and soupçon of Beach Boys in the backing vocals, and there you have it. I mentioned in recent posts that Jackie Trent and Sandie Shaw’s recent #1s were the most ‘sixties-sounding’ pop hits and now, well, I think we have the rock equivalent. We are slap-bang in the middle of the decade, and the sixties have never sounded sixtieser. It’s the perfect mix of old-style rock ‘n’ roll, Merseybeat and the newer, harder-edged rock. It’s a great little record.

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The Hollies were also, like so many of the bands that they sound like, from the north-east of England, and went through the same Cavern Club circuit as all their peers. Founded by Allan Clarke and Graham Nash (later of Crosby, Stills and Nash), they started out as an Everly Brothers style duo before adding a few more members. Their name is – as you may have guessed – a tribute to Buddy Holly. ‘I’m Alive’ was far from being their first hit; nor was it their last. They would go on to have Top 10s well into the seventies, and were the 9th biggest chart-act of the sixties. Not bad, considering that they were up against Elvis, Cliff, The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks and more in that list.

And I have to admit that they are the one big sixties rock group that have passed me by. I know ‘Just One Look’ – another mid-decade pop classic – and ‘Stop Stop Stop’, as well as their later, mellower hits ‘He Ain’t Heavy…’ and ‘The Air That I Breathe’. But I should know more, and will explore their back-catalogue as soon as I’ve finished writing this post. ‘I’m Alive’ was their only UK #1* and that, given their chart longevity, feels like a surprise.

But, before you give delve into their Greatest Hits, give this record one more spin. A song that sounds like the love-child of every prominent sixties rock ‘n’ roll band, a record that faces both forward and back, a record that did a weird mid-summer’s dance with Elvis’s ‘Crying in the Chapel’ (Elvis was #1, then The Hollies, then Elvis, then The Hollies again) at the top of the charts. A classic, that almost slipped through the gaps.

*(My first ever footnote!) Actually, The Hollies will have one further UK chart-topper, with a re-release in precisely twenty-three and a bit years, for Miller-Lite based reasons that we’ll go into when we get there.

196. ‘Long Live Love’, by Sandie Shaw

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**Cue fanfare** For the first time since September 1956 (!) one female artist replaces another at the top of the UK charts. Isn’t it amazing to think that, of the 150 or so chart-topping singles since then, so few have been recorded by women.

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Long Live Love, by Sandie Shaw (her 2nd of three #1s)

3 weeks, from 27th May – 17th June 1965

Jackie Trent didn’t last long at the top – a solitary week is all she got – but our Sandie is back to stake a claim as the biggest female star of the decade. Her first #1 – ‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me’ – was a slinky, sophisticated number. Her second is, well, more of the same.

Except ‘Long Live Love’ is perhaps a little more instant, a little catchier, a little jauntier… A swaying rhythm, a brass section, that ribbed instrument that you run a stick along, (you know the one you always got lumped with at Primary School when you couldn’t be trusted with a recorder, or a triangle…) It’s got a slight Copacabana Beach Bar vibe.

After the false start, that is. A guitar gently strums, Sandie’s voice comes through, as fun and flirty as ever: Venus must have heard my plea, She has sent someone, Along for me… And we’re off. Da-da-da-dada-dada-da-da… It’s an ode to the joys of simply being in love. Meeting each night at eight, not getting home till late… I say to myself each day, Baby oh long live love…

As with Jackie Trent before her, this is an uber sixties record. The sort of song you play over the opening credits of a TV show in order for the audience to instantly realise the time and place. And, also as with Jackie T, the lyrics – the overall meaning of the song – are pretty throwaway. She’s in love. She’s outrageously happy. The end.

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And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a catchy little pop song that shimmies along, over and out in two and a half minutes. In fact, it ends pretty abruptly, as if someone’s just pulled the plug and called it a day. Like I said, ‘Long Live Love’ is a simpler song than ‘(There’s) Always Something…’, it doesn’t have that Bacharach and David gloss, but I think I might prefer it. Sandie Shaw certainly liked it – she turned down ‘It’s Not Unusual’ in favour of it and also recorded a successful version in French. She was riding high, and we’ll meet her again before the decade is out.

I like almost everything about this record, except the title. I get what they were going for – it’s got that carefree sixties wordplay to it. But it’s kind of annoying. Like the sort of cutesy slogan a certain type of person would nowadays have stencilled on their living room wall…

Title aside… There may not have been many female led #1s in the sixties, but when they do come along they feel like a bit of an event. Think Shirley Bassey, Helen Shapiro, Cilla and now Sandie. They’re always classy, and well-polished – records that it feels like a lot of time and effort went into. Maybe they just stand out because it’s a woman singing, but I think there’s more to it than that. And the good news is we won’t have to wait too long until the next feminine vocals pop up on a #1 single, and they will be some legendary vocals indeed…

(Shock, horror! There is no YouTube link for the full, original version of ‘Long Live Love’ – so this is the best I can do. Listen on Spotify for the real version.)

195. ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’, by Jackie Trent

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We are now slap bang in the middle of the 1960s, and we’ve arrived at perhaps the most sixties-sounding song yet. It shimmers, it glistens, it drips… It’s absolutely drenched in the sixties.

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Where Are You Now (My Love), by Jackie Trent (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 20th – 27th May 1965

La…la-la-la-la-la… la-la-la-la-la… a cute little Latin-tinged rhythm, and a voice that is rich and honeyed. I like her voice. I want to listen to it some more. I want it to sing me to sleep. When shadows of evening gently fall, The mem’ry of you I soon, Recall… She sings properly, with a mildly posh way of stressing her words – a slight pre-rock throwback. I imagine this disc playing in a luxury New York apartment, overlooking Central Park at sunset, as a man dressed like an extra from ‘Mad Men’ pours a cocktail for a woman in a daringly short skirt and a beehive…

Then the chorus soars – as the chorus of every mid-sixties, female-led ballad simply must – with swirling violins and portentous drums. Where are you now, My love…? Where are you now, My love…? To be honest, I’m struggling to pay much attention to the lyrics. They are stock-lyrics, lyrics that exist because, well, a song needs them. This record is much more about the sound. About being a gorgeously identifiable moment in time. Listen closely… It’s the sixties…

It’s yet another grown-up pop song. That’s the theme of the first half of 1965: the more we move away from the simple Beat-pop ditties of Herman’s Hermits, Peter and Gordon and the like, the more mature everything is getting. The Righteous Brothers, The Moody Blues, Jackie Trent. I’m no songwriter, but ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’ sounds like a complex song. Upon closer listen, it’s still a verse-verse-chorus-repeat then middle-eight kind of number. But it sounds complex, the way one section leads softly into the other, fading then rising.

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(Note that pretty much everywhere lists the song title as ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’, except for on the disc itself…)

You could be forgiven for thinking that this is another Bacharach and David number – it’s just got that feel about it – but it’s not. It was written by Trent herself, with her song-writing partner Tony Hatch. Apparently it featured in a popular TV series of the time, ‘It’s Dark Outside’, the exposure from which saw the song reach #1. The pair wrote several other sixties hits, primarily for Petula Clark, but also for Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Scott Walker, and more. You can’t get much more ‘cool sixties’ than that list of names… Come the seventies, though, and the hits were drying up for Trent, both as a performer and as a writer. She was reduced to writing songs for Stoke City, to celebrate their appearance in the League Cup Final. And that seemed to have been that…

Until the ‘80s when Trent and Hatch, by this point married, moved to Australia. Where they only bloody went and wrote the theme to ‘Neighbours’. Yes, the theme. Neighbours, Everybody needs good neighbours – played on British TV, twice a day for the past thirty-odd years. Given that no TV show – outside of X Factor, Pop Idol etc. – has contributed more to the pop charts over the years than ‘Neighbours’, it’s amazing to think that (with a slight stretch of the imagination) you can claim ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’ as the first ‘Neighbours’ hit… twenty years before the pilot aired!

Jackie Trent then, ladies and gentlemen, who sadly passed away in 2015. Sit back, press play and enjoy her one and only UK #1 hit – her most famous song-that-isn’t-the-theme-to-an-Australian-soap-opera…

Follow along with every song below:

193. ‘Ticket to Ride’, by The Beatles

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In my post on the last Beatles’ chart-topper, ‘I Feel Fine’, I suggested that it announced the arrival of Beatles MK II. The cool Beatles. The detached Beatles. The stoner Beatles.

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Ticket to Ride, by The Beatles (their 7th of seventeen #1s)

3 weeks, from 22nd April – 13th May 1965

This, their seventh chart-topper in two years (!), is definitely mined from the same groove. It could even have been from the same recording session as ‘I Feel Fine’. The intro isn’t as scuzzy – the chiming guitars actually come across like a church bell on a Sunday morning – but that only lasts a second or two. Soon we lurch into a woozy, droney riff, with drums that roll, then thump, then disappear when you least expect. I’m no drummer, but am pretty sure that ‘Ticket to Ride’ should be produced as the first item of evidence when anyone claims Ringo couldn’t drum.

I think I’m gonna be sad, I think it’s today, Yeah…. The girl that’s drivin’ me mad, Is goin’ away, Yeah… Like most of the big Beatles hits, I grew up listening to this and could sing most of the words. But I’d never really noticed how desolate they were… She said that living with me, Was bringing her down… She would never be free, When I was around… Then how threatening they become: Before she gets to sayin’ goodbye, She oughta think twice, She oughta do right by me…  We’re a long way from ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, Toto.

Going by those lines, it seems as if Lennon & McCartney had been taking notes from the Rolling Stone’s book of romance. It’s the same sort of bruised bravado that we’ve heard in ‘The Last Time’ and ‘It’s All Over Now’. And that’s not the only thing they’d noticed – the clanging, ominous guitars here sound very Stonesy. Except… the lead guitar is also very US folk-rock. Very Byrds-y. And the guitar lick that connects the bridge back to the verses is… a mini-metal solo. Like, seriously.

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‘Ticket to Ride’ is all about the details. Those drum-fills. That guitar lick. The chiming intro and the falsetto outro – My baby don’t care… – reminiscent of the way that they completely changed track for the last five seconds of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. The Awww before the final She’s got a ticket to ride… It’s all about the details, because it’s an impossible record to categorise as a whole. It’s a beat-pop song at heart, but it’s also folksy, it’s heavy, it’s got bloody Indian sitar-sounding riffs thrown in…

I’m aware that this is going to be a very short post for a song of this stature. But we are seven songs into The Fab Four’s chart-topping run – there’s no need for an intro. And with ten more #1s to come from them we don’t need much of a postscript. I’ll leave you with a realisation that struck me midway through my sixth listen of ‘Ticket to Ride’… The Beatles were really, really good, weren’t they?

A playlist with all the #1s so far….

191. ‘Concrete and Clay’, by Unit 4 plus 2

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

I look at the title of this next chart-topper – a little one-week wonder from the spring of 1965 – and think ‘Nope’. I do not know this song. Which is good! I like a nice step into the unknown.

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Concrete and Clay, by Unit 4 plus 2 (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 8th – 15th April 1965

Then I press play, catching a whiff of snazzy Latin guitar and some cowbells? And, what’s that…? The ting of a cymbal? And I start to wonder if perhaps I haven’t, somewhere, at some point in time, heard this before…

It sounds like the music used between scenes in a cutesy rom-com – the sort with slightly older leads (Alec Baldwin, perhaps?), set in a Californian wine-valley… But with added lyrics: You to me, Are sweet as roses in the morning, You to me, Are soft as summer rain at dawn… The suspicion that I may have heard it before grows…

Then we arrive at the hook: The concrete and the clay, Beneath my feet, Begins to crumble, But love will never die… And, yes, I do know this… We’ll see the mountains tumble, Before we say goodbye… Somewhere, deep in my subconscious, this tune must have lain dormant for years, decades perhaps. Until today. The mysteries of the human mind…

It’s a pleasant enough song. Cute, up-tempo, doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s got a kind of timeless sound, a world away from most mid-sixties rock, in keeping with the way that 1965 in general has seen pop music splintering away from the Beat movement. But if I had one complaint about the song it would be that it’s slightly basic. ‘The world may end, but my love will live on…’ is the message, and ‘Yeah, whatever’ is my response. For a record intriguingly titled ‘Concrete and Clay’, it is a little disappointing to discover that it’s just a standard love song.

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And I’m struggling to write much else … Perhaps the fact that I thought I’d never heard of it is telling. Ask a stranger in the street to sing a line from ‘Concrete and Clay’, by Unit 4 + 2 and I’m betting they’d struggle. This is a fairly well forgotten #1 from a fairly well-forgotten band. Not that they were quite one-hit wonders, as their follow up to this managed to reach #14 later in the year.

I like the name, though. The use of numbers looks quite modern, especially when placed next to ‘The Beatles’, ‘Herman’s Hermits’ and the like. Unit 4 + 2 sounds to me like a German Eurodance duo from the mid-nineties. The origin of the name is pretty prosaic though: a band named Unit 4 added two new members, and changed their name accordingly…

And that’s all (he) wrote (about this song.) We’ve not had much Spanish guitar at the top of the charts before now, so for that reason alone I have no problem with this grabbing a week at the top. A cute little interlude on our journey through pop music history… Onwards…

189. ‘It’s Not Unusual’, by Tom Jones

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Some songs take a while to build to a climax; others wallop straight in from the get-go. ‘It’s Not Unusual’, the debut hit from voice-of-the-valleys and now Knight of the Realm, Sir Tom Jones, falls into the latter camp. There is no climax here. Or rather, the song is the climax.

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It’s Not Unusual, by Tom Jones (his 1st of three #1s)

1 week, from 11th – 18th March 1965

Stabbing jazz-bar brass, and hand-claps. Pah-papa-Pah-papa… Your feet instantly start tapping. Then in blasts Tom… It’s not unusual, To be loved by anyone, It’s not unusual, To have fun with anyone… By God could Tom Jones sing. (And still can – let’s not kill him off before his time.) But when I see you hanging about with anyone, It’s not unusual, To see me cry… I wanna die…

Never has a song about a jealous and possessive ex-lover sounded so cheerful. Tom sees his girl around town – flirting, galivanting, generally having a good time – and it kills him. Why did they split up? Who knows? This isn’t a song for reflecting. Why can’t this crazy love be miiiiiiinnnnneeeeee…. he wails as we head into the break. I don’t know, Tom, maybe if you stopped snooping around on her like a creep…?

But it bears repeating: this cat can sing. Jones’s voice is not one you’d ever describe as subtle; but it’s super-soulful and packs a brilliant, throaty rasp. That miiiiiinnnnnneeee above is powerful, as is the way he lets loose at the end. It stands out for miles around compared to his contemporaries, and it is hard to imagine that he was only twenty-four when he recorded this record. Apparently the song was offered initially to Sandie Shaw, but once she heard Jones’s recording she felt it would be impossible to make a better one…

This disc races to an end in precisely two minutes, and it feels even shorter such is the galloping pace that it maintains. Over the past few months I had noticed that our #1s were getting longer. The Animals scored the longest by some distance – ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ reaching four and a half minutes – but ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ and ‘Yeh Yeh’ also pushed well beyond the magic three-minute mark. Tom Jones doesn’t hang about, though. He takes us back several years – to the days when a couple of minutes per song was the norm.

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Despite this being the very first hit for a fresh-faced young Welsh lad, it’s hard to imagine that Tom Jones was ever cool. Even when ‘It’s Not Unusual’ was sitting at number one in the charts, I’ll bet it was being bought more by mums than by their daughters. (Apparently, though, the BBC refused to play ‘It’s Not Unusual’ at the time, as Tom Jones’s image was too sexy…) Later hits like ‘Delilah’, ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ and ‘She’s a Lady’ did nothing to help his image. He’s remained steadfastly uncool throughout the decades, too. He was uncool when covering Prince in the eighties, and he was uncool when he scored a big comeback in the early 2000s with (shudder) ‘Sex Bomb’. There was a good reason he was Carlton’s favourite singer in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.’

But who cares? Who cares if he’s recorded some absolute cheese over the years? Who cares if he looks like someone you wouldn’t leave your wife alone with for a minute? Who cares if, by this point, he’s gone beyond parody? It’s worked for him, and given him career-longevity that few can even dream of. Maybe that’s the key: start of uncool and you’ll never have to worry about losing it… Plus, whenever Tom Jones sings, he sounds like he’s having the time of his life. Love what you do, folks, love what you do. Tom’s got it sussed…

188. ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’, by The Seekers

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For the first time in a good nine months – since The Four Pennies’ bland ode to ‘Juliet’ – do we arrive at a #1 single that I have never heard before. This is how it used to be, of course, in the pre-rock days – before rock ‘n’ roll came along, with all those famous songs in tow. Almost every post was a step into the unknown…

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I’ll Never Find Another You, by The Seekers (their 1st of two #1s)

2 weeks, from 25th February – 11th March 1965

Speaking of rock ‘n’ roll, and the fifties and all that… The opening chords of this latest chart-topper sound a lot like ‘La Bamba’. A mellower, more folksy version of the Ritchie Valens hit to be sure, but they’re there. It’s a promising opening… that lasts until the singers open their mouths…

There’s a new world somewhere, They call the promised land, And I’ll be there someday, If you could hold my hand… Several earnest, fresh-faced voices chime together. I’m getting strong Christians-round-a-campfire vibes… I still need you there beside me, No matter what I do, For I know I’ll never find another you… Or maybe proto-hippies, the first feelers of a movement that will go full-on mainstream in a couple of years? The lyrics sure do sound like they could be about joining a commune (‘The promised land’?)

Not quite. This record is, though, our first slice of sixties folk-rock. The gentle guitars, the clear vocals, the tambourine that gets a good shaking in the background… It’s a genre that I don’t think was ever quite as popular in the UK as in America, where Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, The Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel and, of course, Bob Dylan were big, big stars. But we’d had fair warning of it – remember back in 1961, when the collegiate folk band The Highwaymen scored a surprise #1 with their version of ‘Michael’ (Row Your Boat etc. etc.)? They were from across the pond, too.

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I’m not convinced by this song, to be honest… There’s something a bit cloying about it, a bit happy-clappy. And the lead singer – Judith Durham – sounds kind of like a Sunday school teacher gone rogue. Plus the lyrics don’t really go anywhere – it’s just a long list of what she can do with her man by her side… When I walk through the storm you’ll be my guide… and I could lose it all tomorrow, And never mind at all… etcetera and so on. It’s not terrible; but it’s the worst number one for a while. Probably since ‘Juliet’, the last chart-topper that I’d never heard of… And in its defence, we’ve just enjoyed the highest-quality run of #1 singles in British chart-history, and it would be unfair to completely write a record off just because it doesn’t hit the heights of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ or ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.

I am, for example, a sucker for those yearning chords that pop up time and time again in folk-rock. See lines like You’ll be my someone, Forever and a day… Or If I should lose your love dear, I don’t know what I’ll do… The first song I ever loved – I’m reliably informed, as I was too young to remember – was ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, which I would sing anywhere and everywhere as a toddler, driving everyone around me to the edge of insanity. And ‘Puff’’s got plenty of those yearning, minor-key chords in it. Who knows – maybe I’m a folky at heart?

Of course, all that stuff I just spouted about ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’ being an all-American slice of hippyish folk is undone by the fact that The Seekers were Australian, and that the song was composed by British songwriter Tom Springfield (brother of Dusty – who keeps cropping up via other people’s songs – when will she appear on her own merits?) But hey. It sounds American, and was definitely influenced by American folk-rock artists of the day, so we’re claiming it for the Yanks.

To finish, I’ll return to the pre-rock days that I mentioned at the start of the post. Back then, as Vera Lynn, Dickie Valentine, Winifred Atwell et al were jostling for attention at the top of the charts, the word I reached for more often than most was ‘twee’. And that’s what this is: the twee-est number one single we’ve had in a long time. Altogether then, grab the marshmallows and back round the campfire for another singalong!

Catch up with this handily compiled playlist!

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

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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:

181. ‘Baby Love’, by The Supremes

/ UK #1s blog / 19 Comments

For the intro to this next post, I was going to go all overboard on how this was the first time in ages that two female acts had replaced one another at the top of the UK charts. Sandie Shaw making way for The Supremes’ girl-group stylings. The first time that this had happened since September 1956!!!! Except… For a week in between, ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’, by most-definitely-a-man Roy Orbison, sneaked back to the top of the charts. Ah.

So I need a new intro… How about: And so, with this next number one, Motown arrives at the top of the singles chart! And what a record with which to arrive. A piano intro that slides down the scales – in stereo it sounds as if it’s travelling right to left through your brain – and then the voice of one of the most renowned female singers in pop history:

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Baby Love, by The Supremes (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 19th November – 3rd December 1964

Oooh-hooo-oo… Baby love, My baby love, I need ya, Oh how I need ya…. A girl loves a boy, but he doesn’t seem to be returning the sentiment. All he does is treat her bad, breaks her heart and leaves her sad… Baby love, My baby love, Been missin’ ya, Miss kissin’ ya…

It’s a gorgeous song, the production all warm and glossy, the drums keep swinging time, a mournful sax comes in mid-way through… And Diana Ross’s honeyed voice. A voice that sounds effortlessly perfect. It’s a world away from some of the other female voices we’ve heard so far – she doesn’t belt like Shirley Bassey or sparkle like Helen Shapiro – but it has a special quality to it. In the closing lines – Need to hold you, Once again my love, Feel your warm embrace my love… you can really feel her pleading.

The lyrics, as a whole, though, are pretty meh. Standard ‘Oh baby come back to me I’ll do what you want and give you all my love’ kind of stuff. The default setting for sixties girl-groups. And I don’t want to go all ‘woke’ here but, I’d like a little more sass and swagger from my girl groups. Look back a few years, and Rosemary Clooney and Connie Francis were serving up plenty of attitude in ‘Mambo Italiano’, say, or ‘Who’s Sorry Now’. ‘Baby Love’ comes across as soppy next to those discs.

The other two Supremes – Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson – have equal billing here but aren’t much more than backing singers. 70% of the time they’re chanting Don’t throw our love away… Which they do beautifully, but you can see why the group soon became Diana Ross & The Supremes. Ms. Ross was definitely front and centre from the start. In the UK this would be their only #1 (though we will be hearing from Ms. Ross again), while in the US they enjoyed a staggering twelve (12!) chart-toppers between 1964 and 1969. Of course, classics like ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’ and ‘The Happening’ were big British hits; but another chart-topper always eluded them.

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A few weeks ago, I did a series of posts on songs that should have topped the charts, in which I included Best Pop Song Ever ™ ‘Be My Baby’, by The Ronettes. ‘Baby Love’ isn’t in the same league as that, but in hitting the top spot I feel it kind of represents for all the sixties girl groups (all of them American) that missed out. For The Ronettes, The Crystals, The Shangri-Las, The Marvelettes, The Vandellas… Plus, this is also basically ground-zero for all the girl groups that are yet to come. When I was a teen they were ten-a-penny – The Spice Girls, Eternal, En Vogue, All Saints, B*Witched… They can all be traced back through these three girls and this sweetly sung chart-topper.

A final thought: ‘Baby Love’ really stands out when you hear it in context. On a ‘Motown’s Greatest Hits Compilation’ it might have passed you by; but hearing it now, after months, years even, of boys with guitars and their beat-pop ditties, this record hits you like a crisp, clean breath of Detroit air. Inhale it, and enjoy.

180. ‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me’, by Sandie Shaw

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

This next chart-topper is a record that you can date pretty much instantly. Pretend, for a second, that you haven’t been following this countdown, and that you don’t know we are currently in October 1964. Just drop the needle, and listen. You know, straight away – it’s just got that mid-sixties vibe…

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(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me, by Sandie Shaw (her 1st of three #1s)

3 weeks, from 22nd October – 12th November 1964

There are soft, warm horns, and a little cha-cha-cha, bossanova beat. The ting of a typewriter reaching the end of a line. And a warm, playful voice… I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me… Cute and glamorous – it kind of sounds like a French person singing in English (not that Sandie Shaw is French in any way – she’s Dagenham born and bred.)

It’s a song about a lost love, about how small things – streets and cafes – can remind you of the ones that got away. Oh how can I, Forget you, When there is always something there to remind me…? But, at the same time, it’s not a sad song. I’m not really sure what ‘kind’ of song it is…

It straddles lots of borders: it’s a bit of a ballad, a bit of a torch song, a bit of a standard pop song with a rock song looking to burst through. Listen to all the instruments involved: the horns, the orchestral strings, the twangy, Shadows-esque guitars. Plus the way Shaw sings – soft and lovelorn in the verses; shouty for the chorus. And then there’s the woah-waoh-waaaaa! and the cascading piano that bookmark either end of the violin solo.

There’s a lot going on here, but I like it. ‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me’ is another song I knew – I could have sung the chorus – but had never listened to in any detail. It’s another Bacharach & David number (they’re starting to rack up) and I love the completely pointless brackets in the title. I like it because it doesn’t know, and probably doesn’t care, what kind of song it is. Everything’s been chucked in and given a good mix, and the end result is a classy little #1 hit.

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The only bit that jars is the I was born to love you, And I will never be free… line, because this might have been the swinging sixties, but girls were still expected to pine after their want-away men. Still, Shaw just about sells it with vocals that are both spunky and a little vulnerable.

Sandie Shaw herself is, to me anyway, super-sixties. Just the name, without knowing anything about her, and its playful alliteration dates it to within a couple of years (her real name was Sandra.) And pictures of her taken in late ’64, when this was sitting atop the charts, show a foxy, mascaraed, chunky-fringed girl (she was but seventeen) in knee-high floral dresses. You can easily picture her racing around swinging London town on the back of a scooter, bouncing from glamorous party to glamorous party, from Carnaby Street to King’s Cross.

But… perhaps this tune is actually a victim its era. It’s a good record – a sad song with an upbeat vibe – and yet it pales a little in comparison to some of the era-defining records that have topped the charts recently. A nice song lost among the greats? Our next post is a recap, and so we’ll be able to wade back through all the recent #1s, and really sort the downright brilliant hits from the simply very good. Until then…

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