8/20/2023 0 Comments The who songs 1965![]() The arrangement is kind of boring but still passable. “Hang on Sloopy” isn’t an awful song overall. Singer Anthony Gourdine’s slightly-too-nasal vocals only make it seem more blubbering and clingy, and the instrumental has a Broadway-ish melodrama to it that completes its impression as overwrought and generally unlikeable. It comes off as completely pitiful, and not in a good, so-brutally-honest-it’s-compelling way. The narrator is prostrating himself before his ex, literally begging them to not only scold but hurt him, begging the question of just what kind of relationship they had prior to their split. “Take Me Back” errs decisively on the side of “desperate and overly-needy”. ![]() You need to manage the tone extremely well, and projecting genuine remorse and desire to rekindle a romance while not coming off as desperate or overly-needy is not an easy line to toe. Songs where the singer begs for forgiveness from a scorned ex-lover can be pretty tricky to pull off. #8: Little Anthony & the Imperials- Take Me Back The lightweight pop-rock instrumental fails to lend it any kind of greater texture or emotion, leaving the song as a flat, one-dimensional exercise in mean-spirited mockery. Here, it’s all laid out explicitly, in broad, stupid daylight: “you didn’t listen to my advice, and it bit you in the ass, so neener-neener, guess I was right then, huh bitch?”. Bob Dylan was able to get away with so brutally castigating his song’s subject, both because he phrased it all so poetically and because the vitriol was largely implied, letting his delivery and the forceful instrumentation color his words. As nuanced and powerful as “Like a Rolling Stone” is, “Laugh, Laugh” is on-the-nose and graceless. Right off the bat, if you think that comes off as rather taunting and smug, then believe me, nothing in the rest of the song is going to win you over. “Laugh, Laugh” opens with these lines: “I hate to say it, but I told you so/Don’t mind my preaching to you”. I think we’re all much better off for it. But hey, at least Duke quickly realized she wasn’t cut out to be a pop star, and spent the rest of her career focusing on what she was actually good at. It’s a shame, too, since the half-decent composition could have been brought to life much better by a Ronnie Spector or even a Lesley Gore. She just flat-out isn’t a professional singer, nor does it sound like she has any particular inclination to be one. Duke actually bailed on her recording career after less than three years and never looked back, and if that doesn’t give you an idea of how unenthused she was about singing, then her utterly half-hearted performance on “Don’t Just Stand There” should really hammer it home. ![]() Sadly, actress Patty Duke is no exception to this. Whether it’s teen starlets like Zendaya trying to prove their versatility as entertainers, or middle-aged eccentrics like Johnny Depp trying to stave off a midlife crisis, most of the time it just feels like vanity. Over the years, I’ve found that the vast majority of actors who attempt careers as musicians are simply not up to the task. On with the show! #10: Patty Duke- Don’t Just Stand There Much of it doesn’t feel particularly reflective of its time- not least because its time was good, and these songs are anything but. An interesting thing I’ve noticed around this period is that, stylistically, the bad music tends to occupy a sort of dead zone between bad ‘50s music and bad ‘70s music- too overwrought and schmaltzy to be of a piece with the previous decade, but still too stiff and bland to predict the sounds that would take hold as the cultural upheavals of the 60s settled into a new status quo. For all the wonderful, forward-thinking music 1965 gave us, we also got enough duds to round out another year’s rogue’s gallery. Even the worst years have their share of highlights, and more to the point, even the best years aren’t exempt from the rotten stuff. That’s just the way it is when you’re looking at stuff marketed to such a broad audience. Every year delivers a wide range of quality: you get some good, some bad, and a whole lot of just-kinda-ehh. It has to be clarified here that, whenever I say a chart year was “good” or “bad”, I’m always speaking pretty broadly.
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