Channelzine

Look At That Girl by Guy Mitchell

After so much Frankie Laine, this is wholly refreshing.  It’s chilled out, laid back, swiftly delivered pop, driven mostly by a brushed snare drum and Guy Mitchell’s voice – it’s sugar, honey, golden syrup.  And there’s no unsettling connotations: he’s just saying that there’s a girl and he fancies her, a bit, and he might have a kiss and a cuddle.  It’s innocent and poppy, and the song does exactly what you’d suspect.

This is the first song on this list that I can think of in the terms that we apply to much modern pop music: simple verse, strong melody, driving rhythm, instrumental middle eight, final verse that has a twist on that which has been before (in this case, a dual-layered vocal harmony line and backing singers).  It’s a great, great song. I’ll say it again: Great.  

I Believe by Frankie Laine

I know. People had nothing better to do than to buy this again, three weeks in a row.  I can only assume that the only reason it now stopped being number one is that everybody in the UK had a copy.  

The film tells the story of the Lewis & Clark, a ship sent into deep space to search for the thought-lost Event Horizon, a space ship that was capable of super-fast interstellar travel due to its ability to generate black holes, and travel through them. When the ship is found, the Lewis & Clark’s crew - which features Lawrence Fishburne, Joely Richardson and the perennially-dying-in-sci-fi-films Sean Pertwee - are all killed off in gruesome ways by some unnamed power in the black hole that possesses the body of their ship-mate, Sam Neill (the man responsible for the technology).

So, it’s set in space and features black holes, but as a piece of science is it more like an experiment that betters mankind and helps them travel to the furthest reaches of the galaxy in the name of science, or is it like being kicked across a pool of blood by a naked Sam Neill?

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Moulin Rouge by Mantovani

No, not that Moulin Rouge: this one is from the 1952 film of the same name.  The song itself is quite lovely, assuming that you like vaguely stereotypical French orchestral pieces.  In the film it has lyrics, but this version, the one that conquered the UK charts, is solely instrumental, nothing but the aching of the violins covering the melody.  It’s really quite lovely. 

I Believe by Frankie Laine

Here he is again, good old Frankie Laine! The song reappeared for a further six weeks – I can only assume that the public at large were so terrified by the dead girl in I’m Walking Behind You they fled back to religion and hope.  But this is the last we’ll see of the song, right? Surely…

I\’m Walking After You by Eddie Fisher

“I’m walking behind you on your wedding day,” sings Eddie Fisher, which is a little bit creepy immediately, but made far, far creepier by the appearance of the dead girl singing backing vocals.  She covers most lines of the song in her ethereal howl, mimicking Eddie’s lines, something enhancing them, and occasionally being slightly off-key.  “Look over your shoulder, I’m walking behind,” Eddie closes with as the dead girl howls. Shudder.

I Believe by Frankie Laine

This isn’t the only time that this song is going to appear on this rundown, so I’ll deal with the song itself now.  It was recorded to give the British public hope when fighting broke out in Korea in ’52, designed to let people know that war wasn’t going to happen again – and if it did, at least we had babies, and leaves.  The message itself is lovely (and perhaps why it’s now quite the religious standard), and the delivery is as you’d want, or expect: a voice, some gentle instrumentation, some faint choral backing.  But, amazingly, this still holds the record for the longest number of weeks at number one in the UK chart.  How?  Ask me again in a couple of days…

How Much Is That Doggy In The Window by Lita Roza

Somehow, I almost can’t believe that this was ever a single.  It’s like a nursery rhyme, so tacked onto the public consciousness that one cannot see a Dog behind glass without thinking of this.  Listening to it as music is difficult – how do you separate the history, the jokes , the popular culture references (Newman singing it in Seinfeld! It being played to death in Eastenders!) from the song itself?  Well, you do it like this, I suppose: This song is awful. It’s horrendously repetitive, the barking is irritating, the delivery patronising.  Is that what you wanted to hear? Of course not! Even as I listen to this I actually hear my mother singing it to me when I was a little boy, and I can’t be angry at that.  I can only really smile a bit, and file it under a tab marked as ‘Affectionate Memories’.  

Broken Wings by The Stargazers

This is a notable one! This is the first British song to reach Number One on the UK charts.  Unfortunately – did you know there would be one of those? – it’s a drab old choice.  The backing is some sort of organ playing very little in the way of music, and the harmonies are notably less harmonious than many of the American offerings of the time.  “With broken wings no bird can fly,” sing The Stargazers, prophetically, never to be heard of again.  

She Wears Red Feathers by Guy Mitchell

Aha. I am not sure where this falls on the racism scale, but let’s examine, shall we? 

• “She wears red feathers and a huly-huly skirt” seems to be a rather rash assumption of the clothing of the inhabitants of the Pacific islands.  I’m sure they wear other clothes when they aren’t, you know, being native. 
• “She lives on just cokey-nuts and fish from round the sea.” Well, I’m sure that isn’t true. I don’t believe that this could sustain life.
• When our narrator, an English Banker, travels to her island and asks for her hand in marriage it is granted. But there’s no wedding band! Instead, “Six baboons got out bassoons and played here comes the bride.”  I suspect that this might be poetic license. 
• To top it all off, people laugh at this native islander drinking tea when the Banker takes her back to London.  Well, what a life you have blessed her with, Mr Banker! Abject mockery and tea: that sounds like jolly old England!

The song itself could have come from the soundtrack of Bedknobs And Broomsticks.  Nowadays, the Daily Mail would be in uproar.