art garfunkel

On This Day… 31st October

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

Welcome to another edition of ‘On This Day’, in which we look back at chart-topping hits and stories from a particular date.

While the UK singles charts have had plenty of Christmas hits, and summer-themed hits; other times of year don’t seem to generate as much pop potential. We are still waiting for an Easter #1, for example (Lady Gaga’s ‘Judas’ having been robbed). And, while certain tunes regularly re-enter the charts around 31st October – ‘Thriller’, ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Monster Mash’ etc. – there has never been a specifically ‘Halloween’ themed number one either.

So, I’m going to cast my eyes back, and choose the most unofficially ‘scary’ number one to have been sitting on top of the charts for Halloween. In ascending order of spookiness…

Qualifying for the serial-killer vibes of the title if nothing else, ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ does at least have a woozy, slightly sinister appeal to it. It also has two connections to Halloween, as the Flamingo’s original was recorded on this day in 1958, while Art Garfunkel’s cover was at number one today in 1975. I did name this as one of my most ‘meh’ chart-toppers, sadly, so it has to rank lowest on today’s spook-o-meter. Read my original post here.

Possibly the best number one to have been on top at Halloween, but not quite the scariest. Though this is named after a satellite… which goes into space… alongside UFOs… and aliens are a standard Halloween costume… So there is that. Yes, ‘Telstar’ was at number one in the UK sixty-four years ago today. (It was also famously the first US #1 by a British group, pre-dating the British Invasion by a couple of years.) The eek factor is upped by this being at #1 for the duration of the Cuban Missile Crisis, probably as close as humanity has come to a nuclear wipeout, as well as by being one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite songs. (Original post here.)

‘The Fly’ qualifies as our next, somewhat Halloweenish chart-topper for two reasons. Firstly, The Fly was a character, invented by Bono, and the song is apparently sung from the POV of a man calling home from hell, revealing what he has learned. Secondly, U2’s drummer Larry Mullen Jr. was born on 31st October 1961. For his thirtieth birthday, this track gave his band their second British chart-topper. (Original post here.) ‘The Fly’ was a big departure for the band, but personally I like the experimental direction it heralded for the rest of the 1990s, a period that gave us some of my favourite U2 tracks.

Topping the charts on this day in 1972, we have the third creepiest Halloween number one. I love ‘Mouldy Old Dough’, and the fact that it features a fifty-eight year old lady named Hilda on piano, as my original post detailed. But by God, it needs to be used in a horror movie. Can you imagine a piano coming to life in the middle of the night and playing this drunken, boogie-woogie riff? While the songs only lines (Mouldy old dough… and Dirty old man…) are delivered in the sort of growling, unearthly voice that you’d usually only hear at a seance. A catchy, creepy classic.

Our next chart-topper, sitting on top of the charts for Halloween 1981, is this trippy cover of the sixties classic ‘It’s My Party’. There are covers that sound identical to the original, and there are covers that try something different. And then there’s this… I’m qualifying it as the second creepiest Halloween #1 for the simple fact that Stewart’s production and Gaskin’s vocals transform teenage melodrama into what sounds like it may end up as a mass murder. Tell me that the way she sings the Oh what a birthday surprise, Judy’s wearing his ring… doesn’t suggest she’s slowly reaching for the cake knife. (Original post here.)

What other song could top this list of spooky chart-toppers? What other time of year could this epic have been number one? Thirty-three years ago today, Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ was beginning its third of seven weeks on top. Where to start with this Gothic epic? One of the longest number ones by runtime, with what must surely be one of the most preposterous music videos ever made – levitating chaise longues, anyone? – it remains beloved, and regularly bellowed out at karaoke nights. All this despite people still not being clear on what ‘that’ is… (Original post here.)

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436. ‘Bright Eyes’, by Art Garfunkel

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

So, we hit the bump in the road. The record that ends the gloriously up-tempo run of disco-slash-rock that we’ve been on.

Bright Eyes, by Art Garfunkel (his 2nd and final #1)

6 weeks, from 8th April – 20th May 1979

It starts off quite flutey. I’m not 100% sure that they are flutes. But it’s woodwind of some sort, and it give us a lush, pastoral sort of feel. Which is appropriate, because this is a song with a lot of references to nature. Tides, hills, winds in the trees, rivers of death… Art Garfunkel’s voice comes from afar, a voice that was always quite delicate made even more ethereal when drenched in echo.

It’s still a great voice, one of pop music’s most recognisable, but I’m waiting for the hook. Bright eyes, Burning like fire… The closest we come, the catchiest bit of the song, comes next: How can the light that burns so brightly, Suddenly burn so pale… But it is fleeting. It’s a whisp of a song, without much to grab a hold of.

It’s about death, so that perhaps explains and excuses the funereal air. More specifically, it’s about dead… rabbits? It’s from the 1978 animation of Richard Adams’s novel ‘Watership Down’. It plays as the lead rabbit lies dying from a gunshot wound. (I’ve never seen the movie, but it’s famously traumatising. Disney it is not.) Adams himself apparently hated the song.

I have to admit that, while this record is far from being instant, the chorus has ear-wormed into me after a few listens. Perhaps there is something there. There has to be, to explain its six week stay at the top and the fact that it was the biggest-selling single of 1979. Yep, not ‘Heart of Glass’, nor ‘I Will Survive’, nor any of the other classics still to come in this year. ‘Bright Eyes’, by Art Garfunkel. Has anyone played this recently…?

It’s interesting that this is Art’s 2nd solo chart-topper, two more than his sometime partner. Simon has been the bigger solo star over the decades, but never managed a UK number one. Garfunkel bookends the decade with two monster hits: from ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, to this. You’d have to be very generous not to admit to the drop-off in quality. Meanwhile, as this song meanders on, I find myself wondering if the band Bright Eyes have ever covered it… They might do quite a nice version… Alas, there is no record of them ever having done so.

379. ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, by Art Garfunkel

/ UK #1s blog / 14 Comments

Amazingly, and despite this being the first solo chart-topper for either Simon and/or Garfunkel, I have never heard this record before…

I Only Have Eyes for You, by Art Garfunkel (his 1st of two #1s)

2 weeks, from 19th October – 2nd November 1975

Quick question: has anyone listened to this song in the past thirty years? The big S & G hits still get airplay, as does a lot of Paul Simon’s stuff, and some of Art’s… But this? The only place this is still getting a spin is on those late-night local radio request shows, where people request sexy music for their loved ones. (Do they still exist? The one I listened to growing up was called ‘Pillow Talk’.)

And yes, ‘sexy’ is the right word for this disc. Sexy, sultry, slinky, slow, sophisticated, and any other adjective you can think of beginning with ‘s’ … Are the stars out tonight…? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright… Art Garfunkel croons in that smooth, high-pitched way of his. I only have eyes… For you… Dear… It sounds nothing like the folky, acoustic classics he recorded in Simon & Garfunkel.

I’m picturing a fancy apartment in the Hollywood Hills, candlelight reflected in a private pool, Art flicking the fire on and slipping a bottle of champagne from the cooler, before answering the door to his date for the night… It’s an image. This is purest of pure seventies soft rock. So glossy and smooth that you can’t find anything to grab onto, and so you slide down into the sickly syrup. It is… I’ll just come out and say it… pretty dull.

Nothing about this jumps out as #1 hit material. It is last-song-on-the-album filler, to me. And it’s not as if its success can solely be explained by Garfunkel’s star name. This was the 2nd single, from his 2nd solo album, and it took a leisurely six weeks to make it to the top. But whatever the reason, there it is. Top of the pops. I’m going to proclaim this as the most-forgotten #1 since ‘Baby Jump’.

Things pick up a bit when we get to the Beach Boys sounding bridge – Art Garfunkel is one of the few singers who can make his voice sound like five people. I don’t know if we are in a garden… Or on a crowded avenue… The doo-wop feel becomes clearer when you remember that ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ has been around since the 1930s, while the version that most people know was by The Flamingos, in 1959. The ethereal do-bub-she-bubs that make that version a classic are notably missing from Garfunkel’s version, drowned in the gloop, and that’s a shame.

It has also been recorded by names as legendary as Billie Holiday, Rod Stewart, Louis Armstrong and, um, Michael Bublé. Meanwhile at the start of this post, when I named this as the first solo #1 for either Simon or Garfunkel, I was being slightly misleading. Paul Simon has never (to date, we should add, because who knows!) topped the UK charts. Art Garfunkel will again, in a few years, with a song I have heard before! Hurray.