Listen to any classic rock radio station, or head to a set by any pub band, and you will hear ‘All Right Now’, sooner rather than later. It is inevitable, immutable. Cliched, certainly. But it’s also undeniable. If you look up ‘rock music’ in the dictionary, it probably says: ‘See: ‘All Right Now’, by Free’.
‘All Right Now’ is one of the first rock songs I can remember being aware of. My dad had a ‘Now That’s What I Call the Very Best Classic Rock Album in the World’ type tape for long car journeys, and this was always one of my favourites. (The song for me is quite literally ‘Dad Rock’.) Paul Rodgers always sounded so cool, the way he went from chuckling at the end of some lines, to belting out the Let’s move before they raise the parking rate… line in a husky growl.
Listening to it now, as an adult, I can appreciate the fact that its a very ‘seventies’ rocker – I said hey, What is this? Maybe she’s in need of a kiss… – but also quite clever in the way it twists expectations in the second verse. It’s the woman who cries foul when the question of love comes up. It’s all right now… and maybe now is enough.
But interpreting the lyrics of a rock classic like this is to miss the point. The power of the song lies in the riff, the oh-woah-woah in the intro, and the near minute-long solo. It catapulted Free to stardom, after two albums that had done very little. Not that it lasted, though, as after two further Top 10 hits they disbanded in 1973. In the US ‘All Right Now’ made #4, and is a bona-fide one-hit wonder.
Like many great songs, this was apparently thrown together in ten minutes after a disappointing gig at Durham University. The band felt they needed a big tune to end their shows on… I’d say they pulled it out the bag with this one. (I used to live in Durham, and must have visited the building in which ‘All Right Now’ was written many times without realising…)
After they split, Paul Rodgers formed Bad Company (whose ‘Can’t Get Enough’ was also on that album of my dad’s), and performed solo, before touring with Queen as their lead singer. And I hope everyone enjoyed our sojourn among the random runners-up. Next week, we’ll resume the usual chart-topping posts but, until then, why not rock out to this classic one more time. All right now, indeed.
(I don’t usually attach live versions to my posts, but this performance is just pure rock and roll…)
It’s that time of year, when I fire up my random date generator (random.org, for all your randomly generated needs) and choose some number two singles from across the ages.
In the main Number Ones blog we’ve reached mid-1993, and so the runners-up I picked could have come from any chart dated between then, and the very first in November 1952. I’m not choosing these hits because I like them, or dislike them… I may not have even heard of them. It’s all random. And yet, the first #2 that pops up just happens to be one of the most famous of all time…
On the one hand, great that this classic gets a post. It’s a #1 on every metric – cultural heft, recognisability, singalongability – except the one metric that matters when it comes to getting a #1: sales. On the other hand… What’s left for little old me to write about this colossus?
Thirteen-year-old Don McLean was doing his paper round, or so the story goes, in February 1959, when he read the news of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper (and their pilot) AKA ‘The Day the Music Died’. February made me shiver, With every paper I’d deliver…
The song then goes on to detail the history of rock music from the late fifties to the early seventies, with cryptic references to Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones and more, as well as nods to the big news events of the age: the Kennedy assasination, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Manson family among them. I know this not because I understand the lyrics; I just read the Wikipedia page.
Like all great poetry, it could mean all the above, or it could mean something completely different. When asked what it’s all about, McLean famously answered: ‘It means I don’t ever have to work again…’ When talking more seriously, he’s compared it to Impressionism. And of course, his next big single would be about a very famous (post) impressionist… Which would make #1.
At over eight and half minutes long, ‘American Pie’ initially had to be split over two sides of a 45′ record, which means people (including me) are much more familiar with the first four minutes than the latter four. In fact, listening to the pub singalong last chorus now, I’m not sure I’d ever heard it before. It is the sixth longest record to chart in the US, and held the record for the longest ever Billboard #1 until 2021.
Before I end this post, I have to give an advance trigger warning. ‘American Pie’ may not have made #1 in its original form, but a version by a certain Queen of Pop will make the top of the charts in the early 2000s. I’m someone who will defend Madonna until the cows come home, but even I might struggle to justify that particular musical decision…
If the most important chart trend of the late-eighties/early-nineties was the emergence and dominance of dance, then the second was surely the random re-releases…
The Joker, by The Steve Miller Band (their 1st and only #1)
2 weeks, from 9th – 23rd September 1990
Such as this! There are usually two reasons for a golden oldie like ‘The Joker’ making number one years after its original release: use in a movie, or use in an advert. Place your bets… Yes, it was an advert this time, for Levi’s, that gave the Steve Miller Band their biggest hit, a mere twenty-five years into their career.
There’s little point in analysing this record from a musical point of view. It’s a strange little country, bluesy, slightly psychedelic number, recorded in 1973; and so in terms of its style and its production values it sounds a world away from ‘The Power’ (I will leave you to decide whether or not that is a good thing). It’s also very silly, with one of rock and roll’s great opening lines: Some people call me the space cowboy, Some call me the gangster of love…
Who is Maurice (wheep whoop)? What is a pompatus? They are references to earlier songs by Steve Miller but also, perhaps, the real answer lies in the Eaglesy chorus: I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker… Yes, it’s an ode to ganja, and the joys of the doobie. It’s ironic that in 1990, as Britain’s youth raved their nights away, it took a seventeen year old AM radio staple to bring the drug references to the top of the charts…
It’s a fairly random, but very welcome, chilled-out, interlude in our countdown. There’s a great solo, played through some cool vocal effects, as well as the ridiculous cat-call effect in the verse. And a wonderfully filthy line towards the end: I really love your peaches, Wanna shake your tree… It didn’t make the UK charts in 1973, but it did make #1 on Billboard, meaning that Steve Miller Band now holds the record for longest gap between transatlantic chart-toppers. (The ‘band’ is basically Steve Miller, and a revolving door of supporting musicians. He’s still going, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the mid-2010s).
They had already come close a decade earlier, when the equally fun ‘Abracadabra’ had peaked at #2. Except, in finally making #1, ‘The Joker’ caused some controversy. It sold what appeared to be exactly the same number of copies as that week’s number two single, Deee-Lite’s fabulous ‘Groove Is in the Heart’. But, rather than have two songs share the top position – as had happened often enough in the 1950s – Steve Miller won out thanks to having seen the largest sales increase over the previous week. You could bemoan the fact that a crusty old re-release beat a fresh and innovative dance number on a technicality – aren’t the charts supposed to be for what’s current and all that? – but ‘The Joker’ is fun and lively enough to get a pass from me. Plus, the chart compilers eventually confirmed, presumably after several recounts, that it had in fact sold a whopping eight copies more than Deee-Lite, and was there on merit. Just…
Last week, to celebrate reaching the 600th UK number one, I published a poll and opened the floor so everyone could vote for their best and worst chart-topping singles. I limited it to the 20 winners/losers from my regular recaps, allowed folks to cast as many votes as they wanted… And the results are interesting!
The Worst
Interestingly, almost twice as many votes were cast for the ‘Best’ record than were cast for the ‘Worst’. Nice to see that so many people just want to stick with the positives! Those who did indulge their negative side gave us a Top 3 that looks like this…
Joint 3rd Place (10% of the vote each): ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’, and ‘Wooden Heart’
A stinkingly saccharine Christmas #1 from 1980, and The King with one of his worst movie soundtrack hits (and there’s plenty of competition in that mini category!) from 1961. Yep, don’t disagree with either of those…
2nd Place (15% of the vote): ‘Star Trekkin”
Our most recent ‘Worst’ chart-topper, from May 1987, but one that instantly goes down as one of the most unforgiveable #1s, ever. Again, I’d have put it this high myself and so can only applaud our voters.
1st Place (20% of the vote): ‘No Charge’
But if I’d had to choose one song to finish above even ‘Star Trekkin”, it would have been this teeth grindingly, forehead smashingly, cloying, preaching, sanctimonious, spoken-word horror from 1976. Well done all! Democracy in action!
I was quite pleased with these results (though, I should really have been pleased with any winner, seeing as I hand-picked my twenty least favourite #1s). Interestingly, the least-worst #1s (those with no votes at all) were ‘Lily the Pink’, ‘Release Me’, and ‘Don’t Give Up on Us’.
The Best
So here we go. Officially, undebateably, 100% verified… The three best British chart-topping singles, ever. (Or, actually, the five best, as we have one three-way tie.) One from the ’60s, three from the ’70s, one from the ’80s…
3rd place (6.5% of the vote): ‘The Winner Takes It All’
Of course. You couldn’t have a Top 3 without this. Third place might be too low, to be honest, but at least it’s there. Timeless pop from the best pop group… ever?
Joint 2nd place (8% of the vote each): ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Feel Love’, and ‘Heart of Glass’
We’ve had ABBA. We couldn’t not have the Beatles…
Plus Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder, with what still sounds like the most futuristic number one – forty five years on!
And Blondie, with their first in what has to be one of the strongest chart-topping runs, between 1979 and 1980.
1st Place (13.5% of the vote): ‘Baby Jump’
Yes. It’s official. Mungo Jerry’s ‘Baby Jump’ is the best #1 single, of the 600 to make top spot between 1952 and 1987. Um… There’s a bit of a backstory to this. When I published my original post on ‘Baby Jump’ (a glowing post, because I really do love this rocking, drunken, leery stomper of a song) it was quickly re-posted on a Mungo Jerry fansite. (It even, apparently, came to the attention of Ray Dorset – Mungo Jerry’s lead-singer.) And it seems many of these Mungo fans have stayed on as regular readers, because they came out in their droves make the band’s 2nd and final #1 my poll winner. And who am I to argue? It’s one of the least likely sounding #1s, ever. It’s one of the most forgotten #1s, ever (I doubt it would have gone Top 10 without the preceding success of ‘In the Summertime’). But it’s our Very, Very Best.
A quick consolatory shout-out to the two ‘best’ records that got nil points: Bucks Fizz with ‘My Camera Never Lies’ (seems I am out on my own in naming that as one of the very best), and ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ by Perez Prado (which presumably nobody has listened to for seventy-odd years… It is good though!)
These polls will remain open, and I guess it’ll be interesting to revisit every so often and see if anyone has stumbled across them and added a vote. For now, though, thanks to all who took part! Coming up, I’ll be celebrating a classic Christmas #2, then continuing with the regular countdown next week.
As we are 600 chart-toppers not out (and 20 recaps down) I thought, just for fun… Let’s a have poll on what you, dear readers of this little blog, think are the best, and the worst, #1s so far.
And my apologies, for you are beholden to the 21 records I’ve chosen as my ‘Very Best Chart-toppers’, and the 20 records I’ve chosen as my ‘Very Worst’, in each recap. But, you can vote for as many of the listed songs as you’d like. And you can always let me know how very wrong I was to choose/not choose a record in the comments. The voting will be open forever in theory, but I’ll report back and let you know the initial results in a week or so…
The Best:
Looking back at my choices, I do wonder what I saw in ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ in my 2nd recap (though pickings were slim in 1955). I’d also, given a do-over, choose ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’ over ‘Satisfaction’ in recap seven. I stand by the rest of them, though. Even Mungo Jerry, Mud, and Bucks Fizz! (Though I might easily have swung for ‘Land of Make Believe’ over ‘My Camera Never Lies’ on a different day…)
The Worst:
As for the worst… Well there are some that are truly heinous (The Firm, J J Barrie, Dana…) and others that seemed to suffer from being around during otherwise stellar periods for pop music. The Bachelors are more bland than terrible, but came out in 1964 which, for my money, is the best ever year for #1s. While I regret using up Cliff’s ‘Worst’ award on a bland country ditty, knowing the horrors he has still to come…
Thanks for taking part! The usual countdown will resume with chart-topper 601 in a few days, fittingly the Christmas #1 for 1987. And it’s a song that veers more towards the ‘Best’ than the ‘Worst’. Yay!
We’re also off to the circus… This record starts with the classic Big Top theme, AKA ‘Entrance of the Gladiators’, though I suspect this might just have been the album version. When we finally get to the song proper, it’s a melancholy, rockabilly little number. It thankfully has a lot more life to it than Sayer’s later chart-topper, the snoozy ‘When I Need You’.
There’s a skiffley feel to it – banjos feature heavily – and I like the rasp in his voice. Sayer would perform the song in a pierrot costume, as in the picture above, telling a song of a trapped man: I’ve been used, I’ve been so abused…But I won’t let the show go on! Interestingly, the song’s title is reversed in the lyrics… It’s all about the singer wanting to stop the show. When Three Dog Night recorded their cover (a Top 5 hit in the US) they changed the lyrics to match the title, to Sayer’s chagrin.
I do like this one, even when he starts ooby-doobying. Leo Sayer’s seems to have been a career that covered many bases: rock, disco, pop, as well as soppy ballads. This was his very first hit, the first of ten Top 10s between 1974 and 1982 (not to mention a left-field, chart-topping comeback that will eventually be featuring in my regular countdown…)
There’s a chart-phenomenon that I’ve referred to several times before, that of the January #1. (Basically, it involves stranger than average hits sneaking a week at #1 in the post-Christmas slump, when sales are low and nobody is releasing anything new.) ‘The Show Must Go On’ was a January #2, which by this logic should be even odder than the records one place above them, and it is a strange, but catchy, little record.
Part II of this look at huge chart stars who’ve never quite made it to the top. Yesterday we featured Bob Marley, whose five biggest UK hits were an eclectic mix. Today we feature a woman whose career spans eight decades… and whose five biggest hits are wall-to-wall classics. The Queen of Rock n Roll: Tina Turner.
‘The Best’ – #5 in 1989
I should actually do a full ‘Should Have been a Number One’ on what is probably Turner’s signature song, in Britain at least. It deserves the attention. Although released in the final year of the decade, ‘The Best’ sums everything great about the 1980s (a decade I may have been critical of, musically speaking, from time to time…) Throbbing synths, power chords, a belt-it-out-at-the-top-of-your-voice chorus, a galloping black stallion in the video, and one of the most outrageous uses of a saxophone ever heard in a pop song.
Before writing this, I had no idea that the original had been recorded by Bonnie Tyler a year earlier, or that it was written by the man behind so many ’70s glam rock classics, Mike Chapman. All that is interesting, and relevant, but also completely shunted to the background by Tina Turner’s performance in owning would could be, in different hands, a completely ridiculous song. The fact that I can even overlook ‘The Best’s decades-long association with Glasgow Rangers – they enter the pitch to it, and fans even had the song re-enter the chart at #9 in 2010 – is a testament to how good it is.
‘Nutbush City Limits’ – #4 in 1973 (with Ike Turner)
Before her reinvention as an eighties power-rock diva, Tina had a first wave of success with her then husband Ike in the sixties and seventies. And if ‘The Best’ has a rival for its position as Turner’s signature tune, then ‘Nutbush City Limits’ is it… (OK, and ‘Proud Mary’, which doesn’t feature here…) It’s a fabulously funky tale of a little ol’ town in Tennessee, that sounds as crispy as a piece of fried chicken. It’s a (hopefully) tounge-in-cheek ode to her hometown: no whisky for sale, you get caught – no bail, salt pork and molasses, is all you get in jail… Elevating the song further is the rumour that the track’s distinctive lead-guitar was recorded by none other than Marc Bolan…
‘River Deep – Mountain High’ – #3 in 1966 (with Ike Turner)
Belted out by a young Tina, and produced by Phil Spector using every Wall of Sound trick in the book (it even has Darlene Love on backing vocals), ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ gave Turner her first big hit. Ike was credited, but didn’t actually feature on this version (the couple would go on to re-record it in 1973). It was a big hit around Europe in 1966, but flopped in the US. Spector was so distraught by the song’s failure that he didn’t produce another one for two years, and set off on a very destructive path…
Advertisements
‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ – #3 in 1984
Turner’s certified biggest hit, and her only solo #1 in the US. This was her big comeback after seperating, both musically and romantically, from Ike. While it doesn’t do it for me like ‘The Best’ and ‘Nutbush’ – it tends a little too much towards ‘icky eighties’, especially in the harmonica – I can accept its classic status. In fact, Turner’s outrageous hairdo in the video would be enough to seal this one’s place in the pantheon. ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ went on quite the journey before being recorded by Tina: Cliff Richard turned it down, Donna Summer dithered over recording it, and Bucks Fizz recorded a (pretty decent) version that never saw the light of day until 2000.
‘We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)’ – #3 in 1985
Turner’s joint-biggest hit is this track from the soundtrack to ‘Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome’. She starred in the movie, alongside Mel Gibson. Again, I’m not a huge fan of this one: it’s standard mid-eighties power-balladry (though I do like the snarling guitar). I’d have taken ‘Private Dancer’ (a #26), or ‘Proud Mary’ (never released as a single in the UK!) over this.
Still, there you have Tina Turner’s biggest UK hits that never quite made it to #1. One more ‘Never Had a #1…’ up tomorrow. And it’s the 1980s biggest girl-group!
For my last two covers of the week, I’m going back to the age of glam. I do miss the days when every second chart-topper was a glam-rock stomper…
‘I Love You Love Me Love’, by Joan Jett – originally a #1 in 1973 for you-know-who.
The only problem with ‘the age of glam’ is that one of its biggest stars turned out to be a prolific sex-offender. Despite trying not to, I did enjoy the first two of Gary Glitter’s three #1s. How to listen to them these days, though, without feeling a bit icky? Luckily, Americans have no idea who Glitter is/was, and are happy to use his music at sporting events and in the soundtracks to major Hollywood movies. Joan Jett made a habit of covering old 60s and 70s tunes and giving them a power-rock feel in the eighties. (Yes, I know, he probably still gets royalties. I didn’t say it was a perfect plan…)
‘Cum on Feel the Noize’, by Oasis – originally a #1 in 1973, for Slade
I have complicated feelings towards Oasis. They were once my favourite band (if you were a teenage boy, growing up in suburban Scotland, in the late 90s, you had to love Oasis, it was as good as law). But I don’t listen to them much these days. Liam and Noel are as moronic as they are funny, and they attract a certain type of ‘fan’… And yet, watching this performance at Maine Road, at the height of their popularity, you can see why they were so huge, and it proves anyone who thinks Liam couldn’t sing very wrong. Obnoxious lines like: So you think my singing’s out of time, Well it makes me money… might well have been custom-written for him. Oasis are famously mocked for copying the Beatles, but I’ve also heard them described as ‘Status Slade’. I think whoever said that meant to be bitchy, but I can’t think of a more fun sounding hybrid band. Anyway, I’ll have plenty of time to reassess Oasis when I cover their eight #1s – ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ was a ‘B’-side to their second (and best…?) chart-topper, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’.
Next week it’s back to the usual countdown, starting with chart-topper number 501.
Yesterday I ranked the songs that didn’t quite make my Top 10 of ABBA’s non-#1s. Here, then, is the main event…
10. ‘Does Your Mother Know’ – reached #4 in 1979
The only ABBA hit on which one of the boys took lead vocals, and their final glam-rock stomper. The lyrics are very of their time BUT, crucially, Bjorn acts like a true gentleman towards this teenage tearaway. Take it easy… Does your mother know? You can picture him helping the girl out the club, giving her a bottle of water, and waiting with her until the Uber arrives.
9. ‘Under Attack’ – reached #26 in 1982
One that benefits from not being over-played… This was the last single released before the band split up in December 1982. Sadly it didn’t help them go out with a bang, and limped to a Top 30 peak over Christmas. I love it though: it keeps the moodiness from ‘The Visitors’ album in the verses before dishing out a classic ABBA chorus. Never has a line like: Under attack, I’m being taken… sounded so positive.
8. ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’ / ‘I Still Have Faith in You’ – reached #9 / # 14 in 2021
The comeback hits. One of which, astonishingly, restored ABBA to the Top 10 for the first time in forty years. I’m treating them as a double-‘A’, as in days gone by that’s presumably what they would have been released as. I don’t really know where to place them, how to assess them with regards to the rest of their output yet, so have plonked them right in the middle. One things for sure: both songs hold their own with those from decades before. ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’, to my ears, combines ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘One of Us’, two of the band’s best. ‘I Still Have Faith in You’ I found a little underwhelming on first listen, but in time it’s grown into an epic that could only have been created by one band.
7. ‘Head Over Heels’ – reached #25 in 1982
The single that broke their run of 18 uninterrupted Top 10 hits… But I think it’s a mini-classic. It’s ABBA at their frothiest, and is definitely the lightest moment on ‘The Visitors’ album. It helps that you rarely hear it these days – perhaps if it was as played as ‘Dancing Queen’ I’d be ranking it lower. The video, in which Frida plays a messy It girl, is cheap and cheerful, but Good God those jumpsuits! She’s extreme, If you know, What I mean…
6. ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ – reached #3 in 1979
Until their re-evaluation in the ’90s, the ABBA flame was kept alight in gay bars. Most claim ‘Dancing Queen’ to be their gay anthem, for obvious reasons, but surely they were never gayer than when Frida and Agnetha were demanding a man after midnight. Those exclamation marks after each ‘Gimme’ in the title are everything, as is the pounding, horse-hoof beat, that sounds as close as disco ever came to splicing with a spaghetti-western soundtrack. It was later sampled by Madonna for one of her best songs, however I can’t listen to it now without hearing it sung in the style of Kathy Burke.
5. ‘SOS’ – reached #6 in 1975
I’ve heard this referred to as ABBA’s heavy-metal moment, ABBA’s emo moment, ABBA’s finest moment… I’d say it’s simply pure power-pop perfection. ‘SOS’ was their first big post-‘Waterloo’ hit, and it set them up for half a decade of chart domination. Even this early in their career, with both couples still happily together, ABBA’s melodies and hooks were underscored by melancholy. Even Pierce Brosnan couldn’t ruin this one…
4. ‘The Day Before You Came’ – reached #32 in 1982
Just what is this record about…? Is it the day before meeting the man of your dreams? Is it the day before your death? Your murder? Suicide?? A biting satire on the meat-grinder that capitalism throws us through in the name of a career…? Whatever it might be about, this six-minute, chorus-less epic is probably the most experimental moment of ABBA’s career. The hits were drying up, so why bother trying to write a hit? It was also the very last song they ever recorded (until the comeback). Legend has it that Agnetha recorded her vocals alone, in a darkened recording studio, before walking out and drawing ABBA to a close. Those vocals contain some of the band’s best lines, picking out the mundanity of this woman’s life. I must have lit my seventh cigarette at half past two… and There’s not, I think, a single episode of ‘Dallas’ that I didn’t see… She isn’t at all sure of what happened that day, really; a very unreliable narrator. You could write a dissertation on the many way this song can be interpreted. Who know, someone might already have. Strange, sinister perfection.
3. ‘Voulez-Vous’ / ‘Angeleyes’ – reached #3 in 1979
Apart, neither ‘Voulez-Vous’ nor ‘Angeleyes’ would get this high… As a double-‘A’ side, though, their combined forces get third place. (And, without giving the game away, the highest-placing of ABBA’s ’70s hits…) Both songs are disco heaven, and both are about a sleaze-ball of a man. The same sleaze-ball? In ‘Angeleyes’ the girls want to warn his new lover not to trust him, to warn her away… While in ‘Voulez-Vous’, in the heat of the dance floor, they give in and ask him bluntly: Voulez-vous? Take it now or leave it…
2. ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’ – reached #7 in 1981
In which ABBA move from disco, into electronic dance. The bass slaps (I believe that’s the term), the beat is unrepentant, and the lyrics are classic ABBA (how many dance tracks have words like ‘incomprehensible’ in them…?) My favourite bits are the violins that come in at the end, and the synthesised drops before the choruses, but really it’s all great. This was never intended to be a single, and when it was released it was only put out on 12″, which explains the relatively low peak. Though it was, at the time, the best selling 12″ record ever.
1. ‘One of Us’ – reached #3 in 1981
The first song the band released as two divorced couples; and the last genuine hit single they had. A coincidence…? It has everything you want from an ABBA single: singing through the tears, glorious harmonising from the girls, just the right number of cheesy touches (the parping bass, for example). I’m not sure it’s their best song, but something about it just hits a sweet spot – the Wishing she was somewhere else instead… line is perfection – and so it gives me great pleasure to name ‘One of Us’ as the best of ABBA’s rest.
This next #1 sounds like a blast from the past… Originally released in 1970, the theme from ‘M*A*S*H’ took a full decade to make the top of the charts…
Theme from M*A*S*H (Suicide is Painless), by The Mash (their 1st and only #1)
3 weeks, 25th May – 15th June 1980
The why and wherefore of that we’ll get to in a bit. To the song first, though. It’s a simple enough, folksy ditty. It’s got a very late-sixties, post-Woodstock comedown feel to it. It’s also very melancholy. A song titled ‘Suicide Is Painless’ was always going to be a bit depressing…
Through early morning fog I see, Visions of the things to be, The pains that are withheld for me, I realise and I can see… The main thrust being that life is shit, and that suicide is always an option. By verse three, the ‘sword of time’ is piercing our skin, and everyone’s feeling thoroughly miserable. The singers, meanwhile, harmonise on the choruses like creepy Beach Boys.
I’m going to stick my neck out and say that this would never have been a hit had it not been associated with a huge film and TV franchise. It was the theme to the movie first, in 1970, and then the spin-off TV series between 1972 and ’83. I guess demand had built up over the years thanks to the show’s success, and this re-release sent it crashing up to the top of the charts.
The record is credited to ‘The Mash’, but in reality it was performed by some uncredited session singers who probably never received a belated dollar for their huge hit. One person who did make some money from it was Michael Altman, the fourteen-year-old son of the film’s director Robert. His dad allegedly requested ‘the stupidest lyric ever’, and the kid obliged in five minutes flat.
I think ‘stupidest lyric ever’ is a bit harsh, but the second you realise it was written by a moody teenager then lines like: The game of life is hard to play, I’m gonna lose it anyway… suddenly make complete sense. I think the dumbest bit of the whole song is actually the chorus: Suicide is painless, It brings on many changes… One of pop music’s great understatements there.
I wonder if there was any controversy at the time, either in 1970 or ten years later, around the theme of suicide in a #1 single, or TV theme, and the idea that it might be ‘painless’? It’d raise a few eyebrows nowadays for sure. Either way, it’s a song that’s been covered many a time. In the UK, the most notable has been The Manic Street Preachers’ version, which returned the tune to the Top 10 in 1992. It’s quite a haunting take on the song, too, given the Manics’ guitarist Richey Edwards’ still-unexplained disappearance a couple of years later.
The UK Number Ones Blog 