Our next #2 takes us back to the winter of 1967 – The Winter of Love, as nobody called it – and a band who had scored their sole chart-topper almost four years earlier…
‘Everybody Knows’, by the Dave Clark Five
#2 for 2 weeks, from 29th November to 5th December and 13th to 19th December 1967, behind ‘Let the Heartaches Begin’ and ‘Hello, Goodbye’
Of the five songs that I’ll feature this week, this is the one I’d never heard before writing the post. And it’s a tune that’s very typical of the time. A waltzing rhythm, soaring strings, glossy, chiming guitars… A world away from the pounding pop of ‘Glad All Over’. In fact I’d say it owes a large debt to the big breakout star of 1967 – pillow-lipped crooner extraordinaire, Engelbert Humperdinck. (The Hump went and covered ‘Everybody Knows’ for his ‘Last Waltz’ LP, and made the bold choice to change the lyrics so that he was singing about a man…)
This is a nice enough song, with a lovely key change in the build up to the chorus. But it’s a sign of where pop music was post-British Invasion, when the hippy dream started to go sour, and the sixties started to lose a little of their swing. The best bands ploughed their own furrows: The Beatles went to India; The Stones went satanic; The Kinks hopped down a rabbit-hole of nostalgia… While the rest were left trying to remain relevant. Hence perhaps why The Dave Clark Five ended up sounding like something your gran might shimmy around the living room to, rather than being at the forefront of the hot pop sounds.
Despite it being unashamedly old-fashioned, this single gave the DC5 their biggest hit since ‘Glad All Over’. Possibly the time of year helped, as who can resist a bit of schmaltz at Christmas time? Contrarily, the band had already released a song called ‘Everybody Knows (I Still Love You)’ in 1964, meaning that this one has become unoffically known as ‘Everybody Knows (You Said Goodbye)’. And though it may sound like a swansong, this wasn’t the end for the Five. They still had three Top 10 hits to come, the last of which came in 1970, meaning they outlasted many of their contemporaries.
Tomorrow we’ll have our final runner-up of the series, and if it isn’t another of the most famous #2 singles of all time…
The UK Number Ones Blog 