“Since Yesterday” by Strawberry Switchblade [1985]

This #5 hit in the UK fits among the many songs whose uptempo pop structure seems like an escape from their downhearted lyrics. In this case the music itself is helping convince the singer(s) to go on with life.

“Too Young to Marry” by Summer’s Children [1966]

Belle and Sebastian self-consciously look back to the Sixties with both their name and their sound. But the resemblance of their sound to this 60s flop is uncanny.

Curt Boetcher, producer for The Association, had a knack for glittery sunshine pop. In late 1965, The Association had yet to hit it big (‘66 would be their year), so Boetcher continued experimenting. Among other things, he recorded a pair of duets with Victoria Winston under the name Summer’s Children. “Too Young to Marry” and “Milk and Honey” had to be some of the most innocent, saccharine music to come out in 1966. Recall that songs like “Eve of Destruction,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Satisfaction” had revolutionized the sound of pop music in the second half of ‘65. Neither song charted as they were probably just too sweet for pop radio at the time. Nevertheless, we can admire them, if only because they created a musical formula for later groups like Belle and Sebastian. 

These songs can be found on the album 2001 3-CD compilation Magic Time, which focuses mostly on Boetcher’s later work with The Millennium. It’s a must-have album for anyone interested in the sounds of the late ’60s.

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” (alternate acoustic take) by Bob Dylan [1965]

An Exploration of Music and Poetry, Day 16: Lyrics as Poetry

As this playlist has shown, people had considered the music and poetry related for centuries, but when the subject arises today we invariably end up at the debate over whether lyrics to pop songs can be considered poetry. If we take a step back from the specific tracks in the playlist, we can see that the terms and style of our conversation about music and poetry ultimately trace the their origins to the mid- and late 1960s.

The new “pop music” of the rock era—no longer the rock and roll era—pried the generation gap wider, especially when the young teen and twenty-something musicians and fans proclaimed that rock music was high art. For example, listen to what Paul McCartney had to say when he was interviewed for a 1968 documentary about popular music called All My Loving: (click to 1:55).

Of course critics involved themselves as well. In December 1967 Robert Christgau published an article in Cheetah called “Rock Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe).” I discovered it in a 1969 anthology called The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution. Christgau:

“The songwriter who seems to sound most like a poet is Bob Dylan.”

But

“My Back Pages” is a bad poem.”

And 

“Not much better is the self-indulgence of the Doors’ Jim Morrison.” … “Paul Simon’s lyrics are the purest, highest, and most finely wrought kitsch of our time.” …
“…the only songwriters who seem really to have mastered it are John Phillips and Lennon-McCartney.”

Read the whole article to see where he was coming from. 

My point is that this is the conversation we’re still having about pop music, including hip-hop. To go along with the article, have a listen to a piece of pop-poetry called “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan.

“La Vague” by Nana Mouskouri [1979]

Yesterday I asked who stands as the best-selling solo female singer in the history of popular music. We received many respectable answers, from popular Americans (like Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald) to foreign women (such as Asha Bhosle, Edith Piaf and Fairuz) and a few not so great answers (the Rebecca Black response made me laugh cry).

Honestly, due to the distribution of releases across dozens of labels—some now defunct—and differing measurement techniques (or none at all), reliable sales figures for such popular artists are nearly impossible to come by. A definitive answer may never be known. It is safe to say, however, that one of the three following women has outsold all others: Madonna, Celine Dion or Nana Mouskouri. 

What? You’ve never heard of the best-selling woman of all time? I hadn’t either until last week when about 40 of her CDs came into the used bookstore/record shop I work at. So I did some research into the woman who looks mysteriously like Tina Fey and discovered that she is actually quite remarkable.

A native of Greece, Mouskouri has released records in a dozen languages, with (singing) fluency in Greek, French, German, English, Spanish, and Portuguese (at least). Her repertoire has ranged from traditional Greek music to 60s pop to opera arias and folk. Bob Dylan even wrote a song specifically for her. Worldwide her sales total somewhere around 300 million, or roughly the same as Madonna. 

Mouskouri first broke internationally in France in 1967 and that nation remained her most loyal foreign market. For that reason I chose a good French song from her 1979 album Vivre Au Soleil for today’s Music History track. A touching song about the experience of an ocean wave from Italy (really), “La Vague” had been in her French repertoire since at least ‘71.

The more I’ve listened the more I’ve come to terms with the fact that she is simply a great singer. Whatever your taste, if you come across a cheap Nana Mouskouri CD somewhere, don’t hesitate to pick it up; it will be above average at worst.

“Funeral Tango” by Scott Walker [1969]

For inclusion on the Scott Walker’s aptly-titled third solo album, Scott 3, the British singer borrowed “Funeral Tango” from one of his idols, Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel. As a point of reference, here’s an entertaining live performance by Brel from 1964 (with subtitles). The English translation used by Walker loses a bit of the punch of the French idioms, but either way “Funeral Tango” is hilariously sad but true.

The lyrics cleverly poke fun at the actions of the singer’s “friends” at his own funeral. The narration is fantastically idiosyncratic, too, as the singer shifts from merely complaining about his friends’ materialism (“All doors are open wide / They poke around inside / My desk, my drawers, my trunk”) to sadistically laughing at their expense:

“Ah, you don’t even know
That you’re entering your hell
As you leave my cemetery
And you think you’re doing well
With that one who’s at your side
You’re as proud as you can be
Ah, she’s going to make you cry
But not the way you cried for me
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha - ha, ha, ha”

Seriously, both Scott Walker and Jacques Brel are criminally obscure here in the U.S. Check them out! This is only the tip of the iceberg.

“Classical Gas” by Mason Williams [1968]

After all those 1968 instrumentals, including the #2 song of the year, we are still missing the one that still gets played the most on classic rock and oldies radio: “Classical Gas.”

Mason Williams had a big year in 1968. His primary job was as the lead writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, but he also composed many of the musical-comedy vignettes Tom and Dick performed. On the side, Williams released music, comedy, and poetry albums of his own. In February ‘68 he released “Classical Gas” as a single and debuted the song live as—in theory—a “musical guest” on Smothers Brothers. 

In 1969, Mason Williams was acknowledged for his previous year’s work. “Classical Gas” won three awards at the Grammys, two for Williams himself. A few months later, Williams and the rest of the Smothers Brothers writers also won an Emmy for “Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music” for the 1968-69 season of the show. Two Grammys and an Emmy? Not bad for a single year.

William’s 1970 “acoustic” recording of ”Classical Gas” has been featured before on Music History.

“Grazing in the Grass” performed by The Friends of Distinction in 1970

See also: the original.

“Chovendo Na Roseira” by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina [1974]

As you dig out from the blizzard / ice storm / cyclone / political unrest, sit back and relax to a lazy tune from one of the greatest Brazilian records ever put on wax. The 1974 collaboration between bossa nova legend Antônio Carlos Jobim and classic Brazilian singer Elis Regina would certainly be better known in the U.S. if it had not been almost permanently out of print in America until 2008. At least we have it now. 

Also, click here to hear the beginning of the bossa nova fad 15 years earlier.

“For No One” by Liza Minnelli [1968]

I really should have given this week’s theme a name… 1968 Like You’ve Never Heard It Before! or something corny like that. Meh, we’ll just continue with little-heard gems from that unbelievably groovy year. 

Most people know Liza Minnelli—if they know her work at all—for Cabaret and “New York, New York,” or at the very least for her famous parents. In 1968, still a few years before she would take the role of Sally Bowles in the film version of Cabaret, Minnelli was an up-and-coming 22-year-old with a pedigree. Record labels simply had not yet figured out what to do with her obvious talent. With three flops on Capitol Records already under her belt, Minnelli moved to A&M Records for fresh ideas.

Released February 9, 1968, Liza Minnelli showed yet again that executives and producers did not have the right answer. Minnelli’s performances are technically sound, but the set was such a strange mix of genres, audiences couldn’t tell what to make of it either. Should they give her show tunes like her mother? Yes, but only a few. What about new songs by contemporary songwriters? Well, of course. That’s what other people her age were recording. But not so many that people forget where she came from! That debate, I imagine, is the reason this Lennon-McCartney tune ended up nestled awkwardly between a song by young singer-songwriter Randy Newman and an ancient Al Jolson vaudeville number.

But while the set failed as a whole, Minnelli and Producer Larry Marks made a number of individual moments shine. “For No One” sounds less like the Revolver original and more like a Broadway ballad. As she soon proved, that was her strength.