with a girl like you

Welcome back to our semi-regular feature, in which we explore a day in music history via the medium of number one records.

This time we’re keeping it simple. No births, deaths or marriages. Just four records that were sitting on top of the UK charts on this date in history, with links to my original posts for those who might have missed these song first time around. Let’s start back in the middle of the swinging sixties…

Beginning a fortnight on top on this day in 1966, it’s The Troggs with their sole British chart-topper. In a decade in which guitar was king, ‘With a Girl Like You’ was still noticeable for being even rougher and readier than most rock singles at the time. The first, and perhaps only, true garage rock #1? Quite possibly. The production is fuzzy, the riff simple, and the hook a catchy bababambam-ba.

This is far from being the Trogg’s best-known single, and asking the average person to name their only chart-topper would make a good pub quiz question. Most people might nominate ‘Wild Thing’ (which was coincidentally sitting at #1 on the Billboard 100 on the same day), or ‘Love is All Around’, two songs made famous in cover versions. More on that to come…

Starting its third and final week at #1 on this day in 1974, it’s George McCrae’s ‘Rock Your Baby’. Ushering in probably the sound of the late seventies, this is commonly seen as one of the first disco hits. It is certainly the first disco chart-topper. And it still sounds impossibly smooth, and groovy, fifty-two years on. Perfect for a summer’s day by the pool…

Hitting its second of four weeks at #1 on this day in 1985: Madonna’s first UK #1, ‘Into the Groove’. Despite her popularity at the time, I’m not sure many would have predicted that she’d go on to have twelve further chart-toppers spread over twenty-three years. Or that she would have scored her thirteenth UK #1 album just a couple of weeks ago, with ‘Confessions II’, aged sixty-seven. Despite personally preferring Dusty, or Kylie, or Gaga, I can’t think of an argument in which one can claim that Madonna isn’t the ultimate female pop star.

So yes, here is the Troggs hit that presumably everyone has heard. It had to wait almost thirty years to make number one, in this Wet Wet Wet cover version from the soundtrack to ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, but presumably set Reg Presley up with a healthy pension for the rest of his life.

‘Love Is All Around’ certainly made up for lost time, becoming the longest-running #1 by a British act (a title that it only just relinquished this year, to ‘Rein Me In’, though it still holds the record for longest consecutive run at number one by a British act). On August 4th 1994 it was in its tenth of fifteen weeks on top. I am just a little too young to remember it, but it must have felt that love was indeed all around, and never off the radio, that summer…

Hope you enjoyed this little reflective interlude. Back with the main action in a couple of days!

This next #1 will show us that, no matter how quickly pop music has grown up over the past year or so, how far chart-topping lyrics have moved into the sassier, classier, as well as the more cynical aspects of love and life, there is still room for simple little songs about a schoolboy crush.

the-troggs

With a Girl Like You, by The Troggs (their 1^st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 4^th – 18^th August 1966

Sonically, this is real 1966 rock – raw, crunchy, proto-garage – while the singer, Reg Presley, sounds a lot like his rocky-pop counterpart Ray Davies. But lyrically it’s very cute. I want to spend my life, With a girl like you… And do all the things, That you want me to… With a simple but effective Bababumbumba hook at the end of the every line.

It’s a pop song that could work in any era; but the production here places it firmly in the mid-sixties. Think The Spencer-Davis Group, ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Pretty Flamingo’. We’ve passed through Merseybeat, and folk, stopped by for some baroque, and now we’ve gone garage. Pop music is progressing with almost every hit record.

There’s a bit of a twist here, though. ‘With a Girl Like You’ isn’t just a general ‘Saw a pretty girl and can’t stop thinking about here’ type of song. It turns out, during the middle-eight, that we’re at a dance. In a school gym? Maybe. The sort of precise and slightly banal observation that bands like The Undertones will be making in a decade or so… And it ends with the sweetest of lines: I just hope and pray, That I’ll find the way to say, Can I dance with you? It’s a nice touch, I think, that we don’t get to find out if he ever does…

It’s a short and sweet disc. Two minutes and done. I think it kinds of slips to an end prematurely. It could have had another chorus, maybe? And, as with the other garage hits from this year, I’m struggling to write much more about it. It’s a great little pop/rock tune. Keep ‘em coming!

THE_TROGGS_WITH+A+GIRL+LIKE+YOU+-+4+PRONG-555929

I may not be very familiar with this record, but The Troggs are a band that most people will have heard. ‘With a Girl Like You’ was the follow-up to ‘Wild Thing’ – the definitive sixties garage rock hit? – which had stalled at #2. Not that ‘With a Girl…’ isn’t good, but perhaps it only made number one in the reflected glow of its more famous predecessor. And then there is their #5 hit from ’67, ‘Love Is All Around’, which we will meet much later on in this countdown, when Wet Wet Wet feel it in their fingers and feel it in their toes for nearly four months at the top of the charts. Shudder.

The Troggs, like pretty much every rock group we meet these days, will not see much success beyond the end of the decade. But they are still going, to this day – minus, unfortunately, a few original members. It’s right that a band with such a legacy had their moment at the top of the charts; it’s just interesting that this somewhat forgotten gem is the disc that made it…

	And B-sides… T… on 241. ‘Hello, Goodbye…
	And B-sides… T… on 258. ‘Hey Jude’, b…
	And B-sides… T… on 174. ‘A Hard Day’s…
	And B-sides… T… on 270. ‘Get Back’, b…
	And B-sides… T… on 160. ‘I Want To Hold You…

The UK Number Ones Blog

Join me as I listen to every single #1 single!

On This Day… 4th August

221. ‘With a Girl Like You’, by The Troggs