let it be

Today’s Top 10 – March 31st, 1970

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

A Happy Easter to all who celebrate it. I’m launching a new feature this Easter Sunday, something to enjoy while rendered immobile by one too many chocolate eggs… ‘Today’s Top 10’! My blog focuses very intently on every song that’s made #1 in the UK, and I often try to draw conclusions on how popular music has been shaped, and has shifted, over the years based on one tune alone. Which is actually quite limiting, because the singles charts have always been about more than just the number one. Over the 70-plus years of the singles chart, we’ve had a weekly Top 12, a Top 30, a Top 40, a Top 75, and now a Top 100.

So I want to, every so often, single out a random Top 10 from history, to look at in more detail. My version of ‘Pick of the Pops’, if you will. Cue the music….! Completely at random, using an online date generator, the first to come out the hat was 1970: the singles chart as it stood fifty-four years ago today. It features, inevitably, a #1 we’ve met before (plus one former #1), as well as songs by some of the biggest acts of all time. So let’s crack on…

#10 – ‘Don’t Cry Daddy’, by Elvis Presley (down 1 / 6 weeks on chart)

The early-seventies was a sort of musical wilderness: after the post-sixties comedown, a year or so out from the glam rock takeover of 1972-73. Speaking of musical wildernesses, here’s Elvis with a maudlin ballad about a break-up (or is it a mother’s death?) written from the POV of the couple’s daughter. Elvis croons the life out of it, and that voice could sell anything, but even he struggles to imbue lines like Daddy you’ve still got me and little Tommy, Together we’ll find a brand new mommy… with any sort of gravitas. He was still capable of greatness in the early seventies – in a few months he’d be back on top with one of his biggest hits, ‘The Wonder of You’ – but this is pretty saccharine.

#9 – ‘Everybody Get Together’, by The Dave Clark Five (down 1 / 5 weeks on chart)

The DC5 had scored their one and only #1, the stomping ‘Glad All Over’, more than six years earlier. So it is impressive that they were still hanging around the Top 10, when so many of their ’60s contemporaries had already faded away. This is a call-to-arms, a song with a message: Everybody get together, Try to love one another right now… Originally written as a folk song, and a hit in 1967 for the Youngbloods at the height of flower-power, The Dave Clark Five clearly felt that the sentiment was worth one more go. But there’s a droning, heavy feel to this version that feels weary, as if they’ve given up on the message even before the end of the song. It’s appropriately downbeat, perhaps, for the end of the sixties and the start of an uncertain new decade. Fitting too, as this was the Five’s final Top 10 hit. They would disband by the end of the year.

#8 – ‘Something’s Burning’, by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition (up 3 / 9 weeks on chart)

New to this week’s Top 10, and maintaining our run of hits by artists that we’ve already met in the #1 position, it’s Kenny Rogers and The First Edition with a sexy, sexy song. The verses are soft and slinky, lines like You lie in gentle sleep beside me, I hear your warm and rhythmic breathing… but it builds to a heated crescendo in the chorus. Kenny growls Here it comes, Can’t you feel it baby… and we know he’s not talking about the No. 42 bus. Lord have mercy…! It’s a world away from his much more gentle, much more ‘country’, solo hits like ‘Lucille’.

#7 – ‘Let It Be’, by The Beatles (down 3 / 4 weeks on chart)

Some of you may have heard this one before… The last single released before Paul McCartney’s departure heralded the end of history’s greatest group. There’s nothing new I can say about the record as a whole, so I’ll single out my two personal favourite moments. George Harrison’s snarling solo (especially on the album version) and the way Paul’s scouse accent sneaks through in the word ‘trouble’. Perhaps I’m just used to the streaming age, where songs hang around the charts for……ever, but for a song as legendary as ‘Let it Be’ not to make #1, and then be slipping down to #7 after just four weeks, seems surprising.

#6 – ‘That Same Old Feeling’, by Pickettywitch (down 1 / 6 weeks on chart)

I can’t say I’ve ever heard this one, though it had been as high as #5. It’s a nice enough, Motown-leaning tune done in a late-sixties, bubblegum style. Pickettywitch – I can’t decide if that’s a great or a terrible name – are another sign that though we may be in March of 1970, we’re still in the sixties going by much of this Top 10. Lead singer Polly Brown has a decent voice, reminding me of Diana Ross.

#5 – ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, by Bob & Marcia (up 1 / 4 weeks on chart)

I’ve made many a reference to the fact that reggae is the most indestructible of genres on the UK singles chart. Never the defining sound of an age, but always popping up when you least expect it. In 1970, it really was a new sound, Desmond Dekker having scored the first ‘official’ reggae #1 (if you ignore The Equals, and ‘Ob La Di…’) the year before. This is reggae + , with lots of strings, and rocking drums, but I’d say it still counts. More significant, though, are the lyrics: In the whole world I know, There’s a million boys and girls, That are young, gifted and black… And that’s a fact! Written and originally recorded by Nina Simone a few months earlier, right at the end of the decade that had brought the Civil Rights Movement to a head, for this to make the Top 10 in the UK feels very significant, and the second song in this rundown that could be described as a ‘rallying cry’.

#4 – ‘Wand’rin’ Star’, by Lee Marvin (down 2 / 9 weeks on chart)

A former number one – which I go into much more detail on here – that had kept ‘Let It Be’ from top spot a few weeks before. It was taken from the movie version of ‘Paint Your Wagon’, which was a box office flop. A bizarre #1 at the start of a decade full of bizarre #1s, Lee Marvin officially has the lowest voice ever heard on a chart-topping single (*disclaimer – may not be true*), and uses it brilliantly on this anti-social anthem: I never seen a sight that didn’t look better lookin’ back…

#3 – ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’, by Andy Williams (non-mover / 4 weeks on chart)

Elvis makes a second appearance in the Top 10, in spirit at least, with Andy Williams’ belting cover of the King’s 1962 #1, ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’. If it was impressive that the DC5 were still having hits in 1970, then we should also give a nod to the fact that Williams debuted with ‘Butterfly’ – his sole chart-topper – in 1957. But then again, crooners like Williams are timeless, much less prey to shifting trends than pop groups. The video above, which I think comes from later in the decade, is a spectacular glimpse into ’70s variety shows: the multi-coloured steps, the giant ‘ANDY’, the cardigan…

#2 – ‘Knock, Knock Who’s There?’, by Mary Hopkin (up 5 / 2 weeks on chart)

Venture deep enough into a springtime chart, and there’s a good chance you’ll meet a Eurovision Song Contest entry. ‘Knock, Knock Who’s There?’ was the UK’s 1970 offering, finishing second on the night to Ireland’s Dana. This is very schmaltzy, very middle of the road – not a patch on Hopkin’s huge breakthrough #1 ‘Those Were the Days’ – but it’s a darn sight better than the horrible ‘All Kinds of Everything’. This was a big departure from Hopkin’s usual, folky offerings, and she wasn’t a fan: “I was so embarrassed about it. Standing on stage singing a song you hate is just awful.” Hate it though she might have, it brought about her final Top 10 hit.

#1 – ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, Simon & Garfunkel – (non-mover / 7 weeks on chart)

In the middle of a three-week run at the top, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ was just the 3rd number one of the 1970s, but is probably one of the decade’s biggest and best-loved songs. Simon wrote it, while Garfunkel gave one of the great vocal performances (something that apparently irks Paul to this day…) You can read my original post here.

In a way, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ is the perfect number one for this chart. March 1970 wasn’t the sixties, but it’s wasn’t the seventies as we remember it either. ‘Bridge…’ is timeless, not beholden to many of the styles of the time, and could have been a #1 at most points in chart history. Elsewhere in the Top 10, we tick a few common chart boxes: soundtrack hits, Eurovision, Elvis, The Beatles… Maybe the two most relevant songs, though, are ‘Everybody Get Together’, and ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, which represent the social and civil rights movements that had defined the latter part of the 1960s. The hippy dream may have died, Dr King may have been killed, but hope springs eternal…

That was fun, and hopefully worthwhile. I’ll do another one sometime, as a break from our normal proceedings. Next up it’s back to 1996…

588. ‘Let It Be’, by Ferry Aid

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Uh-oh, charity single ahoy…!

Let It Be, by Ferry Aid

3 weeks, from 29th March – 19th April 1987

OK. That intro might have been slightly tasteless, especially given the disaster that prompted this latest charity chart-topper. On 6th March 1987, a passenger ferry left Zeebrugge in Belgium bound for Dover. The bow door, the one that lets cars drive on, was left open as the ship set off, and it capsized almost immediately. One hundred and ninety three people lost their lives.

Undoubtedly tragic. But the nautical analogy holds up, I think. You’re floating along through the mid-to-late eighties, when along comes a hulking iceberg of a record. Charity songs, with their casts of thousands, their cramming of different styles and voices into one, their overlong runtimes, really do knock the charts off course. And when the record in question is a cover of ‘Let It Be’, one of the world’s best-loved songs, by the world’s best-loved band, you can’t help but wince, no matter how worthy the cause.

But we must listen, and ponder. The best part of an charity ensemble singalong is seeing how many people you can identify. It kicks off with the song’s writer, Paul McCartney, doing his best chirpy Uncle Macca impersonation. Then there’s the still heroin-husky Boy George, carrying the first verse. There’s Andy Bell from Erasure. There’s someone who looks like Marti Pellow (it’s not…) There’s Mel & Kim, again! They (sort of) join the exclusive club of acts who have replaced themselves at #1. There’s Kim Wilde and Nik Kershaw. There’s Kate Bush, who purrs her way through a couple of lines, sounding like she’s been spliced on from a completely different recording. There’s Edwin Starr, of ‘War!’ fame.

There are two guitar solos, from Gary Moore, and Mark Knopfler. Moore’s in particular is pretty blistering, marking this out from the usual charity single fare. There are two guys – one with a bottle of beer, the other smoking a fag – who aren’t quite giving the occasion the respect it deserves. Turns out they’re one half of Curiosity Killed the Cat. This is the second best aspect of a charity single: flash in the pan acts immortalised by being in the right place at the right time. (Also present here is Taffy – no, me neither – who qualified for a line or two thanks to her recent #6 hit ‘I Love My Radio’.)

By the end it’s descended into a pub-singalong, as all charity singles must. I refer to Wikipedia, because it looks like there are at least five-hundred people in the throng, to find it’s actually a ‘Who’s Who’ of previous chart-topping acts: Bucks Fizz, Suzi Quatro, Alvin Stardust, Bonnie Tyler, Doctor and the Medics, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and The New Seekers. Alongside The Drifters… the actual Drifters??… Gloria Hunniford, and Anne Diamond. Of course. They all look far happier than they should, given that it was the deaths of almost two hundred people that brought them all together.

I haven’t commented much on the music, because what’s the point? Charity singles aren’t bought to be listened to. Before you press play, imagine what a cover version of ‘Let It Be’, recorded for charity, in the late-eighties, would sound like. I’ll bet you come pretty close. (Oh and don’t forget to throw in a completely incongruous, but brilliant, guitar solo.) It is what it is. We listen once, and we move on.