January 10 – Other-worldy Earnestness & War Costumes Helped Gary Stand Out

Talk about your lucky strikes. Gary Puckett & the Union Gap were playing in a bowling alley in 1966 and by this day in 1968 were releasing their first album, Woman, Woman. It was a good break for Jerry Fuller as well. Fuller had been in a band briefly with Glen Campbell and the future Seals & Crofts, and had written the Ricky Nelson song “Travelin’ Man’ but was looking to make a career as an A&R man and producer with Columbia Records. Puckett was his first “discovery.”

In the time between the bowling alley and the LP, Puckett and his band had become regulars on the West coast tour scene and had adopted their trademark look of Civil War (Union side) costumes, perhaps for those who found Paul Revere and the Raiders Revolutionary War costumes too old-fashioned!

The Union Gap was a quartet behind Puckett, and an unusual one for rock since it featured two on saxophone. Puckett himself played guitar and was the distinctive, serious tenor voice that distinguished them. He also was something of a songwriter, but Fuller, producing the record, kept him to just one song on it (“Believe Me”), while Canadian bassist Kerry Chater wrote two. But Fuller knew the path to success for them would be cover songs, or at least those written by others, and Woman, Woman included songs written by Sono Bono, Neil Diamond (“Kentucky Woman”), Jimmy Webb (“By the Time I Get To Phoenix”) and notably, the title track which was written by Jim Glaser and Jimmy Payne. The song in which Puckett asked his girlfriend “have you got cheating on your mind?” with what allmusic would describe as his characteristic “almost other-wordly…earnestness and melodrama” became the first in a short but significant string of hits for Puckett.

Allmusic rated the album 3-stars, thinking Puckett “a great interpreter” of songs and complimenting Fuller’s “slick production” as well as the record’s “wonderful contrasts”. The album did moderately well for a debut in the heyday of the Beatles and Monkees, reaching #22 in the U.S. But “Woman, Woman”, the single was a clear-cut hit, reaching #4, as well as #6 in Australia and being a #1 hit in Canada. Oddly, it didn’t do well in the UK, but some of his future hits like the follow-up “Young Girl”, did their best there. So popular were they, briefly at least, in Britain that they got to perform for then Prince Charles (the current king.) They also played at the White House.

Soon however, their star was on the wane and they were tiring of following Fuller’s advice, so the band broke up. Puckett went solo, but never quite had the same level of success, while Chater moved to Nashville and became a reasonably successful country music songwriter.

But should you want a bit of musical nostalgia and even older clothing, Puckett, now 80, has reformed a Union Gap band and are playing three upcoming shows in Texas later this month.

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January 8 – This Queen Is Still Reigning

This day in 1937, two years to the day after “The King” – Elvis Presley – was born, the “Queen” of British music was born in Wales- Shirley Bassey.

Although over here, she’s largely only known for her top 10 single “Goldfinger” (one of three James Bond themes she’s done, “Diamonds are Forever” and “Moonraker” being the others), in the UK she’s been a regular part of the scence since the mid-’50s and is listed by Guinness Book of World Records as the “most successful British female singer of all time”, having 13 top 10 singles there, selling a whole lot of albums and performing for the Queen and Prince Phillip. Years later, the Queen Elizabeth would name Bassey to the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the performing arts. Like Presley, she was something of a regular in the Las Vegas club scene in the late-’50s and like him, she was scorned for her suggestive behavior and lyrics. In fact, between her suggestive lyrics, her appearances on the Silver Screen and larger-than-life persona, she could perhaps be seen as the role model for Madonna and other multi-media women stars who followed. Her first single, “Burn my Candle” in 1956, was banned by the BBC for it’s sexy lyrics such as “open the door and spurn the scandal/who wants to help burn my candle/ at both ends.”

Bassey is still alive and occasionally performing, and willing to work with artists generations younger than herself. She did vocals on a Kanye West song in 2005 (we won’t hold that against her though!) and before that had a European top 20 hit with the band Propellerheads, “History Repeating.” Happy 86th to her!

January 8 – Saturday Nights Were A ’60s Shindig

If you were going out for a fun Saturday night this night in 1966, it would have been worthwhile to stay in until at least 8 PM…because then you could have seen the final episode of Shindig on TV. And take in performances by The Kinks and The Who while doing so.

Shindig was a short-lived but star-packed American music show that ran on ABC between September 1964 and January ’66. However, it ran regularly without a summer break, unlike many shows, and never re-ran any of its 86 episodes. It was produced by Jack Good, who managed several musicians including Cliff Richard. He managed to sell ABC on the impact that rock and R&B music, and in particular the British Invasion, was having on the younger generation and that as such a weekly show showcasing the hottest acts would be a hit. They got Jimmy O’Neill to host it and ran it on Wednesday evenings. Initially it was a half hour show, then briefly they expanded it to a full hour, before eventually changing it to two half hour shows a week, on Thursdays and Saturdays (they’d decided the Wednesday slot wasn’t good because it was going up against The Beverly Hillbillies.) Although O’Neill and Good did a few comedy skits, the focus of the show was always the musical performances. And while it was shot in the U.S., because so much of what was hot was in Britain, they set up a stage in the Twickenham Studios in London, later famously used by the Beatles to rehearse for Let It Be and their rooftop concert. They recorded bits for the show there regularly, and thus American fans got to see some artists – notably The Who – before they even arrived in America. The Who actually played “My Generation” on it two months before it was released!

Through the less than two years it ran, it showcased a real “who’s who” of music stars of the day including …Aretha Franklin, the Four Tops, Temptations, Little Eva (the only known video recording of her doing “The Locomotion”), the Hollies, the Kinks, the Grass Roots, Mamas & the Papas, Moody Blues, Hank Williams Jr., Chubby Checker, Ray Charles and of course, The Rolling Stones and yes, The Beatles. What’s more they had a house band and dancers, the dancers choreographed by Toni Basil and the house band including Leon Russell, Larry Knetchel and Billy Preston!

Shindig also was probably responsible for NBC starting the similar Hullaballoo soon after.

Rhino put released the entire series on VHS in 1991, but it hasn’t been “officially” released on DVD. However, a quick internet search finds that it’s readily available from small labels and is labeled as “public domain.” However, being essentially homemade, one might wonder how good the quality would be. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a power-packed video collection of mid-’60s music, it might be the one to pick up.

January 6 – Fab Four Said Goodbye ’67, Hello ’68 With A Little Deja Vu

The Beatles started 1968 pretty much the way they’d left 1967 – high on top of the world. Very high perhaps! They hit #1 on the U.S. album chart for the 11th time this day 55 years back, with Magical Mystery Tour. Meanwhile, a few pages over in Billboard, they were still at #1 on the singles chart with “Hello Goodbye” from that album.

1967 had been very good to The Beatles, and they to their fans. They released the super-successful Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and standalone hit singles like “All You Need Is Love” and “Penny Lane.” They had gotten over their little fall from grace in the States the year before (due to John’s comments about being “bigger than Jesus”) and were again loved…and selling records by the ton.

Perhaps though, something was gnawing at them. They were big, no question about it, but they perhaps had competition for the title of most popular group. There were those pesky Monkees, and their TV show, who’d scored the biggest-selling album of ’67 in North America, More of the Monkees! While no one’s suggested as much, one might wonder if that didn’t influence Paul’s thinking when in early-’67, he decided the Beatles should make a fab fantasy movie, where the band could, err “monkey” around. Enter Magical Mystery Tour.

Now the film itself was designed to be a psychedelic “romp” loosely based on old bus tours out of Liverpool McCartney remembered his family taking when he was little. The movie premiered on the BBC on Dec. 26th, 1967. The film was…not universally adored. As Pitchfork would later say, “this understated experimental film turned into a sapping distraction.” But the music, that was something else. They created six new songs for it, including the title track, “I am the Walrus”, “Fool on the Hill” and the George Harrison-penned “Blue Jay Way.” That is where the Magical Mystery Tour “album” gets confusing.

In Britain, it was released as a soundtrack, with the new songs on two singles, making a 19 minute EP. Over here however, Capitol decided to toss in some of the singles they’d released over the past year or so that hadn’t been on previous albums. So North Americans got a full, 37minute LP, with the movie songs on one side and “Hello Goodbye”, “Penny Lane”, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “All You Need Is Love” and “Baby, You’re A Rich Man” on the other.

It’s perhaps surprising the music was as good. This was at the height of both the Beatles LSD use and their interest in Eastern spiritualism, and they were so off-putting to George Martin (the old-timer called it “disorganized chaos”) he more or less stepped aside and let his assistant Ken Scott, a sound engineer take over trying to rein the band in in the studio. And tensions were growing; Lennon was clearly miffed that Paul’s “Hello Goodbye” was chosen as the single instead of his “I Am the Walrus”.

But good it was. Critics were uncharacteristically kind to the record (the Beatles had fallen out of favor with some by then). Hit Parader, for example gushed “the beautiful Beatles do it again! Widening the gap between them and 80 scillion other groups,” while in their homeland, Melody Maker declared the EP “six tracks which no other pop group in the world could begin to approach.”

January 1 – Record Store Cash Registers Weren’t Silent

New Year’s Day 1966 kick-started the career of one of pop/rock’s biggest acts. Whether they liked it – or even knew it – or not! “The Sound of Silence” hit #1 in the U.S., the first for Simon & Garfunkel. All the more remarkable since they had broken up by then and hadn’t heard their hit until it was a radio mainstay!

Simon and Garfunkel had some minor success in the second-half of the ’50s as Tom & Jerry. They had one chart hit in 1957 called “Hey Schoolgirl.” Then they’d gone on to school and different pursuits before reuniting around 1963 under the name we know. The fans of the burgeoning folk scene of the time put out an album of mostly Paul Simon-written songs called Wednesday Morning, 3 AM. Despite having a “hip” folk sound and some good songs, it flopped. No more than 3000 copies were sold, Columbia Records weren’t pleased; Art Garfunkel buckled down to study at university and Paul Simon moved to Britain figuring them more receptive to his sound. Neither saw a future playing folk music together for a living.

As in many of these movie-worthy stories about rags to riches, that would’ve been the end of the story if not for the love of folk at Harvard University, and college radio. One or two DJs there found the under-the-radar Wednesday Morning, 3 AM and began playing it – especially “The Sound Of Silence”. At that point, a simple acoustic folk tune. It took off and soon was popular on campuses across New England.

Columbia Records noticed that and saw an opportunity to do with it what Bob Dylan had done – electrify. They figured if Dylan could increase his popularity “going electric” with songs like “Like A Rolling Stone”, so too could Simon & Garfunkel. So they called up their in-house producer, Tom Wilson (who, no coincidence had worked on Dylan’s recent albums) and had him add in some heavier instruments and remix the song. He quickly brought in guitarists Al Gorgoro and Vinnie Bell, bassist Joe Mack and drummer Bobby Gregg, recorded them, mixed it all together and Columbia were off to the races with a spanking-new 7” single!

Off to the races perhaps, but not to the telephone. Neither Simon nor Garfunkel knew of their record company’s experiment. Simon says he was “horrified” when he heard the new mix. “The key to ‘The Sound of Silence’,” he told NPR, “is the simplicity of the melody and the words, which are of youthful alienation….I think about songs and it’s not just what the words say, it’s what the sound says.”

The sound said “number one hit!” to American fans, and it knocked the Dave Clark Five out of #1 this day 57 years ago. They’d go on to have two more in the next few years, “Mrs. Robinson” and “Bridge over Troubled Water.”

They might not have liked the remix but they liked the attention and were soon – very soon – back together in the studio to hastily record their second album, built around this song and titled The Sounds of Silence. The record utilized the Wrecking Crew session musicians (including Glen Campbell) and gave us such classics as “Homeward Bound” and “I Am A Rock”. It would soon go to triple platinum status in their homeland.

December 28 – Fab Four #1 At Being #1

A few weeks ago, Taylor Swift became just the third artist to have been #1 on Billboard‘s album charts for a cumulative 60 weeks, when her 2022 release Midnights went to the top. With it she surpassed Garth Brooks, who’d had albums on top for 52 weeks. The Rolling Stones, perhaps surprisingly had done so for only 38 weeks over their 60 years. So, like her or not, there’s no questioning Ms. Swift is the current Queen of Pop Music. But she’s got a ways to go still to top the “silver medalist” – Elvis Presley, who spent 67 weeks at #1. But it’s doubtful anyone will ever best The Beatles in that category. The Fab Four added to their total, which eventually tallied 132 weeks, on this day in 1968 when they scored their 11^th #1 album of the ’60s – their self-titled one, generally referred to as “The White Album.” With it they ended ’68 on top, just as they had begun it, with Magical Mystery Tour. Remarkably, back in 1964, they had the top-seller for 30 different weeks, or over half the year. More than every other artist combined. That’s pop music dominance!

“The White Album” is considered by some (like our regular reader and guest writer Power Pop Blog) as their best. Best or not, it was certainly their most ambitious and adventurous by far. For starters, it was a double album, rolling out 30 songs and 93 minutes of music for their fans. As such it was their most extensive album. George Harrison had begun to really show himself as a talented writer, writing four tunes on it including the classic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” , which had Eric Clapton make a guest appearance on.

There was perhaps the most hard-rocking material of their career, in “Helter Skelter” , as well as more psychedelia they’d come to embrace on the previous couple of albums, with tunes like “Dear Prudence” and “Glass Onion.” There were lovely soft rock gems like “Blackbird” and “Julia”, some goofy pop ditties like “Ob la di, Ob la da”, and the downright weird… “Revolution 9”, which Yoko Ono had a hand in, for example.

The entire album wasn’t necessarily to everyone’s taste, but there was plenty of variety for any fan to find something they loved on it. Interestingly, one song that wasn’t on “The White Album” was the big hit they had simultaneously, “Hey Jude”. That was released as a standalone single, and keeping a trend that they’d begun on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, they in fact didn’t release any singles off it in their UK or in North America. “Ob la di, Ob la da” was put out as a 7” in Oceania, and it was a #1 hit in Australia and New Zealand, but the rest of us would have to wait eight years until it was released as a single, long after the band had broken up!

“The White Album” would spend nine weeks at #1 in the U.S., and sell an estimated 17 million copies worldwide, third best in their catalog of studio albums behind Sgt. Pepper... and Abbey Road.

December 27 – A Supreme Ending To The ’60s

The decade was coming to a close and so too were some of its defining acts. By the end of 1969, The Beatles had split up (even if the public wasn’t aware yet) and had put out the last album they recorded together, Abbey Road and Motown’s lovely surefire hit-makers, The Supremes were supremely disjointed. That group had made their first appearance on the influential Ed Sullivan Show this day in 1964 and five years later, they had the #1 song. It was to be the final #1 song of the 1960s – “Someday, We’ll Be Together.”

The song was on the Supremes album Cream of the Crop but the single was – generously – put down as Diana Ross and the Supremes. Generous since the other two Supremes, Cindy Birdsong and Mary Wilson weren’t on it! By then, nearly paralleling the situation across the pond in Liverpool, the Supremes, arguably the most reliable American hit artists of the decade, had hit rocky shores and Diana Ross, the face and main voice, had quit, leaving the two backup singers to flounder and look for another lead singer.

Motown boss Berry Gordy was OK with this it seems; he rightly judged that Ross could be a breakthrough star in her own right. “Someday…” was supposed to be her grand entrance onto the solo stage, her first single, but at the last moment, Gordy decided that it might work better under “The Supremes” name tag, and generate more publicity for Ross who was leaving the band. He booked them onto the Ed Sullivan Show the week before Christmas to sing it on their 20th and final appearance there and they finished their final show, in Las Vegas in early January ’70, with it.

Call it “Diana Ross”, call it “The Supremes”, it was a smash. It became their 12th – and last – American #1 hit (the Beatles , for comparison had 18 and two more in the early-’70s), and won them their second platinum single. It also hit the top 10 to the north in Canada and the south, in South Africa.

The song of hope mixed with sadness had first been released by Johnny Bristol and Jackey Beavers in 1961, to very little notice outside of a handful of cities in the Midwest. The pair, (not very successful R&B singers but writers and producers who’d go on to success in that capacity at Motown) had written the song along with Harvey Fuqua of ’50s doo-wop group The Moonglows.

The song had various interpretations, never a bad thing in the sales column. Most interpreted (probably correctly) as being a girl singing to a guy crush who was going away but , she hoped, going to be back someday. Fitting for many troubled couples, and for the gals seeing their boys shipped over to Vietnam in that era. Others thought it was more wide-reaching, thinking the “we” was the Blacks and the Whites, after years of race rioting in Detroit and other centers across the country. Still others thought it was a nice “see you soon” from Ross, meaning that she’d rejoin The Supremes after a record or two.

The latter interpretation was quite wrong. She went on to have success – not quite the level she’d enjoyed with the Supremes, but pretty bigtime nonetheless – for over two decades, while the Supremes never hit the top 5 again and quickly disappeared from the public eye. They did reunite briefly in 1983, to perform this very song on the Motown 25th Anniversary tv show, but that was that. You can catch that on the DVD release of the special – but edited. A part where Diana actually shoved Wilson out of the way to get more of the camera for herself, was edited out.

By the way, if the other two weren’t singing on it, who did we hear? Various Motown backup singers added some harmonies and Johnny Bristol adds the very definitely male bits. He was in the studio, prompting and egging Diana on; they planned to discard his part, but when Gordy heard it, he liked it and kept in on the record.

December 26 – ’60s Alto Star Was A Bass

Remembering one of the great voices of the ’60s: Fontella Bass passed away this day in 2012. Bass is largely considered a “one hit wonder” for her great 1965 hit “Rescue Me”, but there’s more to her story than just one song.

Bass was born in 1940 St. Louis. She was something of a child prodigy on piano and was playing that and singing in church by six or seven. By nine she was singing professionally with her mother and grandmother, both of whom were gospel singers of some renown in the Midwest. By the early-’50s, she was making $10 a day singing (largely at funerals!), which wasn’t bad for the day. “I was sort of like, an income person in the home,” she said years later.

After signing to Ike Turner’s record label briefly in the latter part of the ’50s, to little notice, she was signed by the famous Chess label, at one time the home of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. At first she was just an in-house session player and backup singer but by 1964, she had the chance to record on her own (with among others drummer Maurice White – soon to found Earth, Wind & Fire – and backing vocalist Minnie Ripperton in the studio with her.)

After minor success on the R&B charts with one of the singles (“You’ll Miss Me”) scratching its way onto the mainstream charts, her career took flight with the song she was synonymous with. “Rescue Me” topped the R&B charts for weeks and made #4 on the singles chart. It was a hit in the UK and Canada as well. Journalist Dave Marsh calls it the “best non-Aretha, Aretha song ever.” And it came a year before Aretha began to be known and garner “Respect.”

Bass says it came about when entering the studio she heard blind pianist Ray Miner playing the basic melody and she came up with the lyrics together with him – and God. “He (God) is the only person I can give thanks to,” she’d say.

The single went gold in the U.S. and was the first massive hit for Chess Records in a decade. However, people looking at the 7” single saw the writing credits going to Miner and Carl Smith, who’d also co-written “You’re Love Keeps Taking Me Higher”. Due to that and an iffy contract with Chess, Bass got very little money. “Things were riding high for them, but when it came time to collect my royalty cheque, I looked at it, saw how little it was for and tore it up and threw it back across the table.”

She fought for what she figured was her due (and eventually would reach a settlement with them decades later) but that “side-stepped” her out of the business because she gained a “reputation of being a trouble maker.” That cloud probably never stopped hanging over her as in 1990 she famously – and successfully – sued American Express who’d been using her recording of “Rescue Me” in commercials without permission.

By the decade’s end, she’d moved to Paris, met a trumpeter she’d marry (Lester Bowie, no relation to David) and put out one unsuccessful album there before essentially retiring to become a homemaker and mother. She did a little movie soundtrack work in Europe briefly and had a short return to Gospel music in the ’90s before being sidtetracked again by poor health.

She fought cancer and a stroke in the 2000s but succumbed to a heart attack at age 72. St. Louis honored her with a star on their Walk of Fame. A great one hit wonder, but one wonders if she wouldn’t have been a great deal more if fates had aligned better for her with Chess Records.

December 23 – John & Yoko Were Saying Give Peace A Chance To PM

1969 was a big year for John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It was their wedding year, Year of Peace and year of Canada, That culminated in the pair meeting Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau at Ottawa’s Parliament this day 53 years ago.

The three chatted for over 50-minutes and afterwards Lennon said “if all politicians were like Mr. Trudeau, there’d be world peace,” something Trudeau was very proud of. (And yes, it is Pierre’s son Justin who is now Canadian PM). Trudeau was the only world leader that the pair got to meet directly to campaign for peace with. Lennon had been having difficulties getting into the U.S. so chose Canada as an alternative “home base”. Canada had in general more liberal views than the States and didn’t view Lennon and his left-leaning politics with nearly as much suspicion as their Nixon-era neighbors. The couple thus spent much of the summer and fall between Toronto and Montreal, spending time in both as well as at Ronnie Hawkins farm in between, and having an outdoor concert in Toronto in September where he played his anti-war anthem “Give Peace A Chance” publicly for the first time. The song had been recorded in a Montreal hotel room that summer, when the pair were staging their famous “Bed in for Peace,” and had among the crowd on the recording Tommy Smothers, playing guitar, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, cartoonist Al Capp and popular Canadian radio DJ David Marsden.The single was Lennon’s first solo one and was a top 10 hit in Canada, as well as the UK and Germany.

December 21 – Webb Helped Put Wichita – And Campbell – On Musical Map

If you think of the ’60s, two of the first musical acts you might think of are The Beatles and Janis Joplin. Very few think of the Wrecking Crew…yet remarkably they had a part of more #1 hit songs (at least 40 in the U.S.) than those other two acts together! Of course, the Wrecking Crew wasn’t a real group in the sense of putting out their own records and touring. They were instead a loosely-knitted group of very talented, very in-demand musicians who played on others’ records, to either fill out the sound a little, or in some cases play all the music for groups of singers. Once you learn their names, you’ll find them credited on hits from the Beach Boys to Elvis to Frank Sinatra.

All that in mind, how fitting that on this day in 1968, one of the Wrecking Crew stepped out on his own and had the #1 album in the U.S. for Christmas, knocking Joplin’s Big Brother & the Holding Company off the top before being replaced by the Beatles the following week. That member was Glen Campbell and the album, the iconic Wichita Lineman.

Campbell was a talented guitarist who also was blessed with charm and a great voice. He’d been recording under his own name for most of the ’60s and had become a fairly well-established country star. With this, his 12th studio album, he crossed over and became a full-fledged pop star … within a year or two, he’d even be a variety TV one as well.

Wichita Lineman consisted of 11 songs sung by Campbell, who played most of the guitars, and brought in a number of his Wrecking Crew friends to help out like drummer Hal Blaine, bassists Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn, and Al Delong, who produced the compact 29-minute LP. Campbell wrote the introspective if slightly-dull “Fate of Man” but the other ten tracks were written by others, including the Bee Gees (“Words”), the great Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay”, and a couple of songs also sung by Bobby Goldsboro, “The Straight Life” and “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife.” the standout however, was the great Jimmy Webb-penned title track that Glen was the first to record.

Webb says he had the idea of having another travel or geography-themed song to follow up his previous Campbell hit, “By the Time I Get To Phoenix”. While driving through rural Oklahoma, he saw a repairman up at the top of a telephone pole along a lonely road. “The picture of loneliness,” Webb says. “It was a splendidly vivid, cinematic image that I lifted out of my deep memory” when writing it. It was also an ideal song that appealed to pop and country listeners, and has since been covered by artists ranging from Tom Jones to R.E.M. In 2019, the Library of Congress inducted it as a work of “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.”

It was also of significance to Campbell’s career. The song hit #1 in Canada and #3 at home in the U.S. (where it was his best-showing until “Rhinestone Cowboy” hit #1 about seven years later) and topped both country and easy-listening charts. Add in the “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife” – rather cringeworthy by today’s standards, and to feminists of the day – which hit the top 40 in North America and it pushed the album to the top, the only one of his lengthy discography to get to #1 and in the U.S., it sold double-platinum, best of any of his studio albums.

Although the record didn’t do nearly as well in the UK, that land’s BBC don’t shy away from their appreciation for the song “Wichita Lineman.” They not only described it as “one of those rare songs that seems to exist somehow in a world its own – not just timeless but ultimately outside of modern music” before labeling it “the greatest pop song ever composed.”