The Carpenters - Yesterday Once More (1973/ No. 2/ 17 weeks/ A & M)

Those were such happy times
And not so long ago...

For me, The Carpenters stand as the absolute antithesis of easy listening, presenting song after song to the listener that look searchingly into what it means to be alive and face the likelihood of vulnerability and disappointment. This is achieved with a stoicism and a lack of grandstanding that makes their work amongst the most grown-up in pop, supported by memorable, spacious arrangements that allow the mood of the songs to truly breathe and allow the listener to enter into the world of the music.

None of this would be possible without the wonder that was Karen Carpenter's voice, my favourite in pop, with its remarkable capacity for intimacy, a sense of closeness and compassion that made Herb Alpert remark that listening to her sing was "almost like she had her head in your lap". Every song seems like a confidence entrusted to you, the listener, alone. By the time that you get to the latter records, things like 'Make Believe It's Your First Time' and 'Touch Me When We're Dancing' the effect is almost unbearable, half-literally the voice of a dying woman, her brother's way with a tune and an arrangement audibly faltering behind her.

Even in their earlier glory days, this discomfort is always present. Hence this, their biggest ever British hit, is a song about youth meeting maturity and the ultimate limitation and failure of pop music;

When I was young
I'd listen to the radio
Waitin' for my favourite songs
When they played
I'd sing along
It made me smile.

The songs are now back on the radio and the opportunity to sing along has returned for the woman who was once the girl. This provides the opportunity for the girl and the woman to meet each other face to face, like the old and young Houseman in Stoppard's Invention Of Love;

Those old melodies
Still sound so good to me
As they MELT THE YEARS AWAAAY!

Something has gone horribly wrong for her between then and now. Love either never came, or failed, or was sought in the wrong places. The anticipation of grown-up feeling meets its actual reflection through the portal of the nostalgia show.

When it comes to the part
Where he's breaking her heart
IT CAN EVEN MAKE ME CRY - JUST LIKE BEFORE

Yes, but its a different intensity of crying now, isn't it? Not the impatient anticipation of love and incipient adulthood, but its failure or cruelty. Those songs seem both deeper and flimsier now ("Every Sha-la-la-la/ Every Wo-o-wo-o/ Every shing-a-ling-a-ling"...)

The dear old music, "back again, just like a long-lost friend", doesn't help her deal with the present.

It's as desperate as watching somebody hug themselves for comfort and understanding.

In the 1973 parent album, the effect is accentuated by the song fading into a 15-minute pastiche radio show 'Oldies Medley' of Carpenters-interpreted hits of 1963 (1960s nostalgia and so early!), the tenor of which gradually changes, from youth ('Fun Fun Fun'), to sex ('Da Doo Ron Ron'), to lost love ('The End Of The World'), to unrequited love ('Johnny Angel'), to betrayal ('The Night Has A Thousand Eyes'), to songs of anticipated love and triumph unbearable to return to... ('Our Day Will Come' and 'One Fine Day')

Flashing past her eyes like a suicide whose life flashes past her eyes.

And then a reprise for a minute. The sepulchral lines;

When I was young I'd listen to the radio...

So fine...

So fine...

are repeated on a loop, each time fading further into silence, against a single static piano chord.

The breaking string. The severing of the past from the present.

Mr Bloe - Groovin' With Mr Bloe (1970/ No. 2/ 19 weeks/ DJM)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaQWOne1sfo

What couldpossibly be more 1970 then a novelty discotheque harmonica one hit wonder? A novelty discotheque harmonica one hit wonder performed a knocked together made-up band of top session musicians, of course! (The harmonica ace behind Mr Bloe is Harry Pitch, who can also be heard on the theme tune to Last Of The Summer Wine)

The title encourages the listener to think of the harmonica as being the musical embodiment of Mr Bloe, and the single as the wordless epitome of Mr Bloe's conception of grooving. And Mr Bloe most assuredly and instantly memorable groove to share with us -

Wahwah! Wah-wah Wahwah wah Wawah! Wah Wawah!

repeated many times. But Mr Bloe can also be a reflective and laid back character, who sometimes breaks off from his main groove to look over his shoulder and give a smile to the listener -

Wah wah Wawah - Wahwahwah...

He's brought some friends along with him, too. Although they are very much supporting characters in the Mr Bloe show, their contributions are vital. There's a peripatetic bassline - dumdadalumlum- dumdumdum! - and a drum that provides cascading rolls whenever Mr Bloe catches his breath, and lets us know that yet another

Wahwah! Wah-wah Wahwah wah Wawah! Wah Wawah!

is about to reappear and delight us once again.

Like a lot of instrumental records, the particular delight of Mr Bloe lies in its use of space, ensuring that the listener fully discerns every pleasurable detail of the record and immediately wants to play it again to moment that it finishes.

Postscript: Oh this is interesting - I've just found the US original single that Mr Bloe is a UK copy of. It sounds more Northern Soul and a bit more frenetic than the British hit -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIipqsDkd3A

So, whether by accident or design, the session musician version does change the tune into something different, and not in a cheap or tacky way.

Perry Como - For The Good Times (1973/ No. 7/ 27 weeks/ RCA)

For me, the greatness of this quietly astonishing single lies in the disjuncture between the singer and the song. This isn't a glib exercise in cross-generational marketing - the modern world is full of unwelcome and trying "Tony Bennett sings Nirvana" promotions - but a surprising choice that adds depth both to the voice and the song.

Even a crate-digging pop swot such as myself finds it hard to find anything good to say about the fifties heyday of Perry Como. His Bing Crosby easygoing vocal stylings are clearly attempting the same sort of thing as Dean Martin. but while Deano generally achieves a state of soused insouciance, Como at best sounds bored by what he's singing, at worst lobotomised.

His early seventies commercial second wind is something quite different, though. The sense of ease is still there, but it now sounds like an emotional state that's been earned and has some life experience behind it, plus he's stopped singing irritating perky songs. There's a very slight waver in his voice now, making him sound grandfatherly. And RCA have clearly put their very best arrangers and players behind him, and some thought has gone into the selection of his material.

Who wrote 'For The Good Times'? Kris Kristofferson, that's who! A hippy cowboy! The really disconcerting line in this song is;

Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body close to mine

This degree of intimacy - however unsalacious and matter-of-fact - is surprising from Como's mouth. You expect a Como love song to be palliative and general, a tabula rasa for the audience to draw their own tender feelings upon, not an actual song about a specific relationship. The framing context for this line shows what unfamiliar territory this is for the singer;

Don't look so sad
I know it's over
But life goes on
And this old world
Will keep on turning
Let's just be glad
We had some time to spend together

So these two people share a bed and are separating. In a Como context, this feels remarkably grown-up - in a rather uncomfortable way. Songs of lost love you expect, but the actual separation is surely too painful to go into.

The singer is clearly trying for a measured dignity and conciliation in his approach ("There's no need to watch the bridges that we're burning"), but is desperately clinging on to this last day together;

Hear the whisper of the raindrops
Blowing soft against the window
And make believe you love me,
One more time...
For the good times

The good times have gone really, but a perhaps a simulation of them can be constructed from their ashes. Note the vibraphone emulating the patter of the raindrops, one half of a melody line which it alternates with a chilled string section, supported in the background by a refracting guitar line. You'll eventually note the world's subtlest backing vocals once you've heard this a few times, too, female "Oooh-ooh"'s that seem to cradle the hapless singer.

The speculative second verse is almost unbearable;

I'll get along
You'll find another
And I'll be here
If you should find,
You ever need me
Don't say a word
About tomorrow or forever...
There'll be time enough for sadness
When you leave me

It takes the greybearded MOR dignity of Como to mask the country origin of the song, the tale of a deluded loser trying to hold things together: You must do what you think right dear and build a new life - but I can't, and will be here waiting for you.

The gentleness of the song can't completely muffle the pain. A song for beautiful losers.

Mud - Tiger Feet (1974/ No. 1/ 11 weeks/ RAK)

"All night long you've been -
Lookin' at me!
Well you know you're the -
Dance hall cutie that you love to be!
Oh well now -
You've been layin' it down!
You got your
Hips swingin' out of bounds!
And I like the way you do what you're doin' to me!- ! - ! - !
ALRIGHT!"

True stories behind the hits: Nicky Chinn is wallpapering his home. As he attempts the tricky maneuvering of some pasted paper he says to himself “That’s right. That’s right.” Admiring his handiwork, he reflects “That’s neat!”. Then the good mood is spoiled by his looking down at his shoes and observing that stands of fallen paste have formed stripes. “Oh, I’ve got tiger feet.” he observes ruefully…

Then a great big lyric writer’s light bulb is illuminated above his head.

There can be few better apprenticeships for becoming a great pop group than being the house band on 'The Basil Brush Show'. The next few paragraphs aren't by me (http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/10/mud-tiger-feet/ ), but rather brilliantly explain in musicological detail just why 'Tiger Feet' is so tremendous;

"“Tiger Feet” achieves the magic 10 status thanks to (a) the writers and performers remembering that pop is “you know, for kids”; (b) the inspired idea to nick the drum beat from “Ballroom Blitz” and double track it - thus that irresistible dance groove; and (c) the quintuple guitar attack.

Here’s the set-up. Back-centre is an octave leaping pig-nosed ‘bass’ (this could be a guitar actually, I think there’s a separate bass line in there somewhere, but no matter), ramping up the beat yet another notch. Right channel, the fuzzy main riff straight out of the Quo playbook. Left channel, a sparking second guitar, responsible for the off-beat accents. Then in the instrumental breaks after the chorus two more lead guitars in the centre of the mix, playing the solo in descending, parallel fourths - again probably a nod to the likes of Quo - and of course this was later a Thin Lizzy trademark. I don’t know if Rob Davis - our friend with the dress and the earrings and the future second pop career - is responsible for all these guitars. I fancy he might have been, since this arrangement is a feature of all three of the above-mentioned singles yet not of any other ChinniChap production of the time.

But each part sits beautifully in the mix and at no time does it feel like excess. There is plenty of space for Les Gray, thankfully reining in the Elvis Presleyisms for once, to coo his appreciation of the ‘dance hall cutie’ who’s given him a feeling in his knees(!) - the dumb lyrics a perfect match for the party vibe of the music.

My favourite bit is actually the fade, where you get two dueling vocal lines, one going ‘T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-tiger Feet’ and the other ‘That’s right (x8), That’s neat (x4)’ and so on. The two parts meld to create nonsense sounds - simply adding to the general sense of delirium the record has been building up to."

God, I love this… It cheers me up and makes me laugh. I even always attempt to do a silly dance whenever I hear it.

Hamilton Bohannon - Disco Stomp (1975/ No. 6/ 12 weeks/ Brunswick)

"Everybody do the disco stomp!
Everybody do the disco stomp!
Baltimore!
Baltimore!"

Staggeringly ahead of its time; the minimal, utilitarian, vocals, the subtly flowing rhythms, the patient key changes, the robotic place name recitations (particularly the atonal 'NEW YORK CITY' towards the record's end).

Was the disco stomp ever a real dance? I’d like to think so. The rhythm and structure of this single make the imaginary dance the best pop craze ever in my mind, spiralling across the United States, peculiar and unexpected, and yet – yes! – making dance floors fun and affectionate places.

The Band - Rag Mama Rag (1970/ No. 16/ 9 weeks/ Capitol)

Now here's an exercise of remarkable audacity and boldness - The Band decided to freshen things up in the studio by swapping instruments, and the resultant thrown-together song of lurching and joyous experiment became the hit single!

Everything about this is off-centre - the fiddle saws and the tuba puffs, the way that rinky-dink piano slips and slides all over the place. It all fits a non-realist lyric about a skinny girl who just wants to rag mama rag instead of other activities, which would be evidently more appealing to the singer.

"Its dog eat dog
and cat eat mouse.
You can rag mama rag
all over my house."

The tale takes in caboose and turtles, railroads and telephones. It is not a surprise to learn that "the bourbon is 100% proof" in the world of this song.

This single opens a gate into another land for the listener, a place where life is lived differently.

Mary Hopkin - Knock Knock Who's There? (1970/ No. 2/ 14 weeks/ Apple)

A two-time loser, runner-up to 'All Kinds of Everything' in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, and then #2 in the charts behind 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'... But a lot better than either of those.

There appears to have been a real formula to arranging British Eurovision entries in the late sixties, a jaunty oompah feel and a chorus made super-memorable by a hook that you could sing along to if you were in nursery school. So this comes after 'Puppet On A String', 'Boom-Bang-A-Bang' and 'Congratulations', all songs that I quite enjoy listening to, but for which I couldn't make any claims for.

This is rather deeper, though I'm not sure how many 1970 Eurovision viewers picked up on this. The chorus is so bright and universal that it fits the competition formula;

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Could this be love that's calling?
The door is always open wiiiiiiiiide!
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Now as the night is falling,
Take off your coat and come insiiiiiiide!

And then, to impress the song upon the non-English speakers:

La la la la la!
La la la la!
La la la la la la la la la la la!
La la la la la!
La la la la!
La la la la la la la la la la la!

(You have to have a very appealing voice to pull off that particular trick without being irritating. Mary Hopkin was up to the task - remember how much her vocals contribute to David Bowie's 'Sound & Vision')

As is often the case with the songs I like, the verse undercuts the chorus. The happy arrival is a longed-for occurrence, disrupting solitude and misery;

Tears of rain
run down my window pane,
I'm on my own again
good evening, sorrow.
Sit and dream
of how things might have been,
And as I close my eyes,
I get the strangest fee-ling.

The knocking visitor is only a spectre, a product of imagination, "how things might have been".
Although its not quite as good as 'Those Were The Days' this is another song of projection and ghosts, events that don't take place...

The Peppers - Pepper Box (1974/ No. 6/ 12 weeks/ Spark)

'Pepper Box' is an instrumental that would not exist without the exciting possibilities created by the development of the primitive synthesiser. There are three elements; A generic, but still highly pleasurable, pop/ funk bassline, some handclaps, an a persistent very-high-pitched Moog whine (like the one in 'Machine Gun' by The Commodores, but all over the thing). I imagine that for a lot of listeners, the synth solo might be as irritating as a buzzing wasp in the room (and it is so high pitched that it could remove earwax on headphones) but works for me within the jolly spirit of the thing.

Research leads me to discover that The Peppers were not, as I'd presumed, some very minor Moments-type American R&B troupe but a pseudonym for Roger Tokras, a French studio musician. So historically this could be the source from which (the 1970s) Space, Ottowan, Daft Punk and Air all flowed from.

Medicine Head - Rising Sun (1973/ No. 11/ 9 weeks/ Polydor)

"Ooh when you speak its just like a symphony
Ooh your fingers touch me with poetry
Don't underestimate what you mean to me
You're like a constant glimpse of the rising sun"

Few genres of music seem less appealing to me than 'blues-rock', which suggests worthiness without the sense of necessity that the old bluesmen had. But this is dandy!

It can only be described as a groove, a bassline that details flake off of and embellish; an echoing riff or knocking of drums, a spacey bit of keyboard, a twanging spring. It's locked-on - a happy sentiment - rather addictive.

The Carpenters - Only Yesterday (1975/ No. 7/ 10 weeks/ A & M)

Although it was one of their biggest hits, I'd be surprised if Only Yesterday was one of many peoples' very favourite Carpenters songs. The effect of listening to the single is a bit like hearing a Carpenters Greatest Hits Medley, reminding you of treasured moments and effects in their other songs.

In particular, of three of their previous songs, perhaps their greatest; from 'Rainy Days and Mondays' and 'Goodbye to Love' the very personal sense of loneliness explained and confided to you, the listener, alone; and returning from 'Yesterday Once More', the yesterday motif - that earlier single an almost unbearable suicide note of a song, as upsetting to hear as watching someone forlornly hugging themselves for comfort.

The yesterday of 'Only Yesterday' is performing a very different narrative function here, however. Instead of signifying the irretrievable hopes of a teenager, this yesterday is the literal immediate past, bringing a sudden change of fortune for the singer in the form of a new boyfriend. Much as the appeal of listening to The Carpenters lies in desperately wanting things to come right for the singer, it has to be said that cheerful optimism was probably not their strongest facet, and is the sort of clean-cut white bread thing about them that people who dislike The Carpenters find so grating.

So 'Only Yesterday is very much a record of two halves. The first eighty seconds of the song - I've been so unhappy - belong to Karen, and then - "Now that I've found you!" - Richard takes charge with a top-of-the-range-1975-hi-fidelity-ingenious-bells-and-whistles easy listening arrangement. Both halves are good, but the second doesn't carry the emotional depth of the first.

Karen Carpenter's treatment of the first verse is a masterclass in phrasing and inflection, giving conviction to the story of desolation turning into hope. She starts by emphasising the universality of her situation, stoically sharing troubles with the listener;

(A slow drumbeat, some airy keyboards)

After long enough of being alone,
everyone must face their share of loneliness

There's an endearing sibilance at the end of that"loneliness". And then a confidence is shared, as she starts to sing her particular story to the listener.

In my own tiime nobody knew...
the (throat contracts, the next word sung chokingly) *pain* I was goin' through...
And waitin' was all my heart could do.

This making the best of things, being honest to herself about her vulnerability... Karen Carpenter is like a Terrence Rattigan heroine relocated to 1970s Los Angeles. During the next few lines of tentative hope, she allows a little sunlight and breeze into her singing;

(still desolate) Hope (sudden, vulnerable rise) was all I haad until you came.
Maybe you can't seee (might lighter, with a smile) how much you mean to me...

And then a delirious note of optimism bursts through;

You were the DAWWN breaking the niight...
The promise of morning liiiight!

It sounds delirious because you worry for her as you realise how elemental this feeling is - how everything is at stake for her, the new-found love as necessary for this woman to live as light is for a plant to photosynthesise. This change in her situation creates new, sensuous, possibilities for the singer;

Filling the world (mouth relishing the next word) surroundin' me.

Up to this point, the presence of Richard Carpenter has been pretty muted. Only a very close listening reveals his touch - through a clever arrangement which unobtrusively continues to add new orchestration to a sparse-sounding recording. He's been saving himself up for the chorus, which starts relatively subtly by building up the singer's new mood of tentative optimism;

(multi-tracked Karens) When I hold you -
(multi-tracked Karens and Richards!) baby, baby, feels like maybe, things will be all right.
Baby, baby, your love's made me -

And this is the precise moment when the single changes over from being about the sister's vulnerability to being about the brother's delight in using the studio's resources to playful effect. There's a sudden change of gears;

Free as a song!
Singin' for ever!
Only yesterday! When I was sad and I was lonely -
You showed me the way! to leave the past -
and all its tears behind me!

For years, whenever I heard this, I had a nagging sense of familiarity. I now realise that *this* is what I was being reminded of - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU2DWJJopWs .

As a narrative, the song is effectively over by this point. What follows is less of a disappointment once you know how the record goes. A cornucopia of Richard studio tricks ensues - sunny harmonies, clarinets, a swiftly abandoned skwalling rock guitar (a reprise of 'Goodbye to Love's surprise masterstroke), a sax solo, castanets, bells, chiming guitars... Best of all though, is some quietly bonkers drum rolls from Karen. She sounds like she's enjoying herself, and the sense of fun and possibility carries over to the listener.

Cher - Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves (1971/ No. 4/ 13 weeks/ MCA)

DAUGHTER: The fair has come to town, Mummy! Can I go? Can I go? Pleeease! There'll be dodgems and a helter skelter and a wheel and shooting galleries and a ghost train and candy floss and toffee apples and everything! Let me go there! Pleeease!

MOTHER: Well, alright dear, but your not to go on your own, do you hear me? I'll take you on Saturday, but we'll have to leave before it gets dark.

(to FATHER): Have you heard, darling? The fair's come back!

FATHER: Oh God! Is it that time again? We must remember to lock up very carefully for the next few days. At least she's not a teenager yet.

Although this is a song about a "travelin' show", not a fairground per se, all of the fears and excitement raised by the descent of carnival folk upon your town are evoked by Cher here. She tells us the story from the inside, as an itinerant child;

Gypsies! Tramps! And Thieves!
We'd hear it from the people of the town...
They'd call us -
Gypsies! Tramps! And Thieves!

Her tone of voice is particularly interesting when she tells us this. You might expect her to be upset and angry about facing all this mistrust and prejudice as a girl. Instead, there's a flat note of resignation, acceptance that this is just how things are. This tone makes the story of the song feel more authentic, and also puts the listener on their guard - You're aware that something bad might happen to this girl.

The mean townsfolk are, of course, hypocrites. It is from this reversal, the showpeople being the honest victims, that the drama of the song derives;

But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down

Lay their money down for what, exactly? Cher tells us about her parents;

I was born in tha wagon of a travelin' show.
My mama used ta dance for the money they'd throw
Papa would do whatever he could
Preach a little gospel...
Sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good

Note how there's a bar of woozy drunken tinkling after "Doctor Good", to evoke the groggy effect of drinking the moonshine. The song's arrangement is built upon a lot of rinky-tink percussion, harmonica, xylophones, tambourines, that sort of thing, to create an authentic travelin' show mood of a pitch being struck. (It also sounds a bit like the theme to Ski Sunday at times, but that's not an overbearing problem)

The misfortune that befalls the protagonist is a story that is economically told;

Picked up a boy just south of Mobile
Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal
I was sixteen, he was twenty-one
Rode with us to Memphis
And papa woulda shot him if he knew what he'd done

I never had schoolin' but he taught me well
With his smooth southern style
Three months later, I'm a gal in trouble
And I haven't seen him for a while...
I haven't seen him for a while...

Nobody could hear this single and assume that this silver-tongued and shifty young Southern man was going to come back... The end of the song echoes the beginning, only now the singer is dancing for the money they throw, to support her daughter, another baby "born in the wagon of a travelin' show", the aged grandfather now having to pitch and hustle to support another generation of children.

I sometimes think that this is the only Cher song that I've heard where her part Native American ethnicity informs her performance, if only subliminally: The story of a group of people who are patronised as being colourful, but backward and uncivilized, who end up getting exploited. Its certainly a song about being a victim, but also, through Cher's interpretation, a song about accepting your lot.

Chic - I Want Your Love (1979/ No. 4/ 11 weeks/ Atlantic)

Hearing this song in its original March 1979 top ten context on Pick of the Pops is an instructive experience. Surrounding it are many records that I really like, and could easily write about instead (The Players Association, Squeeze, The Real Thing, Elvis Costello, Gloria Gaynor) but even so, this immediately stands apart, as a more serious and higher order of being than anything alongside it. Why should this be?

I'm not sure that there have ever been another group of musicians who I react to quite as deeply as I do with Chic. Is it the bass or the guitar that's leading the tune? The thing really is dependent on the interplay between them... Bernard Edwards' bassline seems to slow down time, make the experience more sonorous and make the song a really autonomous world that the listener is inhabiting - and then Nile Rogers' guitar keeps things moving, frisky. Both instruments are always playing to each other as much as combining to create a tune. You're following two different lines of feeling that are entwining around each other. And then the drumming gives the whole thing a pulse.

What is unique about this is that there is so much going on in this music, so much fascinating and joyous detail, and yet it seems so spacious and uncluttered. The arrangement is clever, too, strings, brass and bells are all thrillingly deployed but very sparingly used.

And what a song this is! You could perform it a capella and it would still be pretty devastating;


Do you feel ?
Like you ever want ?
To try my love ?
And see how well it fits?
Baby can't you see?
When you look at me
I can't kick this feelin'
When it hits
All alone
In my bed at night
I grab my pillow
And squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze it tight
I think of you
And I dream of you
All the time
What am I gonna do?

The song that supports all of this magnificence is so simple, so unembellished, that it is always an uneasy, personal thing to hear, no matter where or when you hear it, as if its being sung directly to you, or you're being made to imagine yourself singing it.

Suzi Quatro - She's In Love With You (1979/ No. 11/ 9 weeks/ RAK)

1979? She was still having hits that late? Wholly deserved though. An interesting single for two reasons;

The sheer joyousness of the music -

"She's in love with you!
(bass goes dumdadalumdumdadalum! - drums go fump! clik!
That's all she wants to do!
(dumdadalumdumdadalum! fump! clik!)
She'll never let you down!
She'll never fool around!
Cos she's in love with you!
(dumdadalumdumdadalum! fump! clik!)"

- not to mention the masterstroke of the continuous Hammond organ drone, like Focus or the like.

It also has a deeper, lexical, fascination. Songs declaring somebody else's love are surprisingly rare - 'She Loves You' being is the obvious example - especially when you consider how integral "My mate fancies you" is to schooldays courtship. Suzi offers a lot of special pleading on behalf of the 'she' who she's lobbying for;

"So if you happen to be out one night
and someone asks you where you're gonna go
Just remember she's not like the other girls
she may not want them all to know
Though she may need a little time
she never wants to stand in line
the way they would
So treat her nice!
Treat her good!
Treat her like you know you should!
You may never find another girl like her"

The note of caution is always apparent. There is a real sense of lived experience, and misfortune, to the message. Suzi brilliantly manages to convey both the joy of the lovestruck girl, and the worldy wisdom of the woman who's been around.

Donna Summer - Down Deep Inside (1977/ No. 5/ 10 weeks/ Casablanca)

"Down deep inside
there's a place in me
I'm yearning to explore"

Written by John Barry, not Giorgio Moroder this time, but the great soundtrack man has learnt a trick or two from the disco king. All of the great Summer singles have an extraordinary effect on perception in replicating an altered state through tempo and instrumentation; 'Love To Love' ever more unfurling and internal and orgasmic, 'I Feel Love' with its combination of refraction and motorik movement replicating the dislocating moment when body, thoughts and feelings start to go out of synch with each other.

"something warm is turning inside of me"

'Deep' creates the sensation of feeling oceanic, swimming or sexual. The cricket chirps make it fussy and tropical, but then that central section where it all dissolves into aqueous dub before the strings re-emerge like the Titanic's bow port. And then the waves start to roar..

CCS - Tap Turns On The Water (1971/ No. 5/ 13 weeks/ RAK)

 I have a theory that the charts of 1971 are the happiest hunting ground for crate-digging searchers of curiosity and diversion such as myself. Beyond Bolanmania there seems to have been no underlying pop trend that year, leaving the charts as open ground where absolutely anything could be a hit, however unorthodox, however silly, however rocking.

 It was in such a climate that CCS could be chart heroes. This group were essentially a lot of top session musicians under the leadership of Alexis Korner, best known as a super-credible figure on the London music scene, acclaimed as "the father of British blues" by Richards, Hendrix, Clapton, Page et al. If you're like me, you may be more aware of Korner's contribution as the guest vocalist playing the racist father on Hot Chocolate's 'Brother Louis' - "I don't want no smoke in my family. Get it? No smoke!"

 CCS occupied the midway point between blues scene credibility and Hot Chocolate pop. Originally put together to record a top quality cash-in hit cover version of 'Whole Lotta Love', the Top Of The Pops theme, Korner then kept the name going for a couple of years to create strange pop hits that both wrongfoot and delight the listener.

 Tap Turns On The Water has a very odd structure for a hit single, the sort of thing that you would have to be both a very confident musician - and somebody with little appetite to become a pop star (Korner was already well into his forties) - to have come up with.

 The entire first minute of the single goes in a different direction to where the song even begins to start. We get percussion that I'd describe as boxy, in the sense that you can imagine it being slapped and thumped on packing cases, a sonorous jazz piano motif that steps forward and back, and a mariachi-styled massive fanfare of brass. This music sounds simultaneously joyous and rough-hewn, like coming across a thrilling impromptu party.

 Then everything stops to let some guitars in, and the song proper starts, with a call and response verse between the singer and the band that you think must be the chorus:

Peak through the bathroom door
(Did you evah? Did you evah?) -
See a sister in the raw?
(Did you evah? Did you evah?) -
Swear you could booze all night?
(Did you evah? Did you evah?) -
Sweatin' hard and you're turnin' white?
(Did you evah? Did you evah?)

 Its clearly a story presented by a band of dirty men with quite a bit of scuzzy life experience... This effect is accentuated by Alexis Korner's voice, which sounds simultaneously lecherous and aristocratic. This combination is important, meaning that the singer is both someone whose been around the block, but an amusing and diverting character to listen to: a good bluesman!

 You have to wait until you're halfway into the single before you get to the actual chorus:

Tap turns on the water!
See the waters flow -
Acorn makes a forest!
Watch the forest grow -

- which is repeated ad infinitum. Its joyous, and the joy comes in creating a mood that is tricky to pull of, and at the root of some of the greatest pop: moronic/profound.

The Detroit Spinners - Could It Be I'm Falling In Love? (1973/ No. 11/ 14 weeks/ Atlantic)

As a pop-obsessed 12-year old of 1985, this was obviously a song that I knew well, thanks to David Grant & Jakki Graham. But I had never knowingly heard the original version until Dale Winton played it on Pick of the Pops one Saturday a couple of years ago. So the initial effect on hearing this was to be struck by quite what a feeble effort the UK interpretation is; a blaring and thumping eighties arrangement that lacks finesse and turns the song into a karaoke number.

An absolutely crucial thing about this song that I hadn’t realized until I heard it anew again was how badly it works as a duet. Grant and Graham interpret the thing as being a buoyantly cheery song of found love – the ‘Could it be?’ question clearly a rhetorical device, a veneer of faux coyness to cover a mood of mutual triumphalism.

Actually, though, this is a song that is above all about doubt – about a sense of disbelief about the possibility of finding love and happiness;

Since I met you I’ve begun to feel so strange
Every time I speak your name…
That's funny.
You say that you are so helpless too.
That you don’t know what to do.

- and of admitting this to yourself when it may once again turn to ashes;

Each night I pray there will never come a day
When you up and take your love away…
Say you feel the same way too
And I wonder what it is I -
Feel for you

This mood of vulnerability is accentuated by the Al Green styling of the vocal. The music too is extremely slow, and the arrangements are all quite subtle details. This is an archetypal slow dance number to neck and to cling to at the end of the dance (or it would work just as well to cry into your beer to), to make the dancers very aware of the beating of hearts – either their own or the other’s.

The female vocals that come in at the chorus are spectral, as much in the mind of the singer as a woman who he’s talking to. This sense of internal feelings being externalised is accentuated by the ad lib to fade in the last minute of the single;

I walk around with my heart in my hands hey
Walk the street as long as I can baby
I used to sing (…)
Once you get me up
Won’t let me down
Just let this feeling carry me on…
Skip the beats with my heart, girl

Hushed. Awed. Sanctified by love.

Secret Affair - My World (1980/ No. 16/ 9 weeks/ I-Spy)

The mod revival of 1979 is not remembered as one of the highlights of British pop history, and perhaps rightly so; Bands with names like The Scooters and The Mods, teenagers in supermarket versions of the snappy attire of their 1960s elders. Secret Affair in particular, as the only band from this movement to have more than one hit, are generally remembered with derision, especially for their fanatical group of followers, the self-styled 'Glory boys'.

What the myth doesn't lead you expect is what these singles actually sound like, attempts to find valiant moments among the absolute mess of youth culture life of the end of the 1970s. These songs are a bit more honest and canny than their idiot reputation might suggest. Hence, the anthemic 'My World' is also a study of confusion and insecurity;

I can feel that taste for life -
slipping away!
And striking the lost chord I find -
nothing new to say!
Someone told me all dressed up -
nowhere to go!
I should have that sinking feeling -
my heeaad huuung low!

The music here is extraordinarily jittery and skittish, especially the hyperactive drums. The string section is not the usual attempt to paste on a sense of gravitas, but conveys a ceaseless restlessness that is both uncomfortable and questing. I've never taken speed, but I think that it might be a lot like this. The chorus is glorious and takes up most of the record; innumerable yelps of "MY world!" - the interior and the universal combined in the minimum number of words. By the fade-out it transforms into a call-and response "My world!" alternating with "Your world!", joining the listener into this very specific and necessary worldview.

Andy Williams - Where Do I Begin? (1971/ No. 4/ 18 weeks/ CBS)

Karen Carpenter apart, Andy Williams is my favourite pop voice. It's the absolute lightness within the great power, so that even at his most emphatic, it feels as though he's gently confiding to you (seen here in the repeated "She fills my HEEAARRRT!")

‘Where Do I Begin?’ is a song of found love that could be absolutely appalling if treated differently. The choruses are a series of questions ("How can I begin to tell the story of how great a love can be?", "Where do I start?") that are both awed at being in love, and admissions of doubt, particularly the "How long must it last?" of the second chorus. In contrast, the verses are descriptions of rapture (a love "older than the sea", full of "angels songs" and "wild imaginings").

The doubt and the joys are perfectly balanced in Williams' reading, which is neither cynical nor sentimental. You'd want to be in love like this, though the pain entailed is clear, too.

The Johnny Pearson Orchestra - Sleepy Shores (1971/ No. 8/ 15 weeks/ Penny Farthing)

The theme from Owen MD. No, me neither. It was something on BBC1 that starred Ian Cuthbertson, presumably as Owen. But like the themes from A Summer Place or Stranger On The Shore this piece has long become detached from its mysterious source, and has an autonomous life as a work in its own right.

It must be one of the quietest hits of its day. A piano tinkles back and forth while a string section undulates; waves, beach and sky. From time to time the thing pauses and slightly changes direction. Its very poised and unruffled. There is a tremendous sense of past and nostalgia to this music, inherent for me to the hauntological process of listening to television themes from before I was born, but surely also integral to the music itself. I can't ever imagine this sounding current, but working for the listener as an echo; the remembrance of the sea heard in a shell, a message in a bottle.

Joan Baez - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (1971/ No. 6/ 12 weeks/ Vanguard)

"Like my father before me, I'm a workin' man,
Like my brother above me, I took a rebel stand.
He was just eighteen, proud and brave, But a Yankee laid him in his grave,
I swear by the mud below my feet,
You can't raise a Caine back up when he's in defeat."

A civil war song about the siege of Petersburg that lasted for almost a year in 1864 and 1865, seen from the point of view of a young confederate soldier holding the line against the Union army ("We were hungry. Just barely alive") and mourning the death of his young brother alongside him.

Also a revered rock classic from The Band's second album, and a song which I prefer in this version. As is often in the case in cross-cast cover versions, the displacement of voice from protagonist perhaps makes the listener concentrate on the story more and empathise with the teller through this (Brecht!). As always Baez's extraordinary purity of voice lends the epic story a beauty and understated grandeur.