90. ELOISE – Barry Ryan (1968)
So here’s an all-time fave of mine, topped my charts as a ten-year-old, cos it was (and is) EPIC. It starts off pretty big, and 5 minutes it’s in the territory of sweeping orchestral choir-filled thumping frantic passionate ballad hysteria. I mean, when I say “hysteria” I mean actual vocal hysteria. No-one has ever approached Barry Ryan’s climactic 30 seconds on record that I’ve heard. The 60’s was a time of the sweeping epic cinematic ballad, a format that seems to have largely died out in recent decades give or take the odd McAlmont-Butler, Pet Shop Boys or Trevor Horn production, but Eloise ranks among the very best of the genre, and the teen idol Barry Ryan (his twin brother Paul now doing only songwriting and production) had a run of 4 years of great (minor) hit-singles, and one monster: this one. It was still admired in 1974, and was still admired in 1986 when punk band The Damned put their own spin on it for another top 3 smash – Barry hit 2 in the charts. A decent version, but is it EPIC? Nah. THIS is how you do “Epic”….
89. RETURN TO SENDER – Elvis Presley (1962)
The first big Elvis hit on the countdown pulls in at 89, fresh from the Girls! Girls! Girls! film, The King being quite the cheesy movie star by this time, bunging out hit film after hit film for a good 12 or 13 years, 2 a year. Basically the extended videos of their era, then. Most of the films were rubbish, but I can tolerate nostalgic efforts like Fun In Acapulco and Speedway, which had Nancy Sinatra doing a duet. An actual duet with Elvis. Sort of. Unheard of! Return To Sender? S’OK. Easy to sing, short n sweet middle of the road pop, not Elvis at his best though, not Pop Elvis, not Ballad Elvis, not Gospel Elvis and not Rock’n’Roll Elvis. It is, however, better than Vegas-Elvis. I think it remained popular as it has a certain quaint charm in the lyrics, but there is much better to come, and plenty of better Elvis tracks that aren’t on the list.
88. THE SUN AIN’T GONNA SHINE ANYMORE – The Walker Brothers (1966)
Talking of Eloise, here’s another 60’s Epic sweeping production from the USA’s Walker Brothers, the trio were not brothers, nor named Walker, and were huge in the UK, but not the USA – Scott Walker, though, was the main man and as solo artist moved to the UK/France/Europe music scene and became a cult with Jacques-Brel-inspired solo epic productions like Jackie, which was banned at the time on radio and is more or less banned these days too, but for different reasons. Stupid reasons, but there you go. This Four Seasons cover is an example of taking a decent sad pop record, and transforming into a heart-wrenching, End Of The World-feeling break-up song. When I’m stressed to the nth and needing emotional release, this has been one of a handful of Go-To records for me for the best part of 35 years now. It drips emotion, a guaranteed 3-minute goosebump-fest that has me in tears if I attempt to singalong. Genius. Cher had a go, now there’s a woman who can wring emotion out of a song when she tries, but it doesn’t even come close. No other version does. Totally deserving of a place in any All-Time Top 100, then and now.
87. THE TWELFTH OF NEVER – Cliff Richard (1964)
Just as Elvis was going down an MOR pop route in the early 60’s so too his UK rival, Clifford of Richard, not yet a Knight of the Order of the Garter. Listen to this and ponder demanding that knighthood and OBE back! What a pile of cack. So what was this mushy pedestrian cover of a lush Johnny Mathis song doing in the rundown? Well, Cliff and Elvis fans were very clearly out in force (the vast majority women in their 20’s and 30’s) but that still doesn’t explain why this track was in and others were out. No Move It. No Summer Holiday. No The Next Time. No The Day I Met Marie. All vastly better records from his back catalogue. The answer is fairly easy: Donny Osmond. Donny had hit the top spot with his not-quite-so-rubbish cover of the song mere months before, so I’m guessing that some Donny fans voted for the song (but forgot to the write the artist name down) and some Cliff fans were pissed off at Donny’s version and voted for it out of support for the bachelor boy.
86. (TO BE) YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK – Bob Marcia (1970)
Reggae! This Nina Simone minor US hit from 1969 got the reggae cover treatment in 1970 from Bob & Marcia, which was a burgeoning list of success for Jamaican acts (and others) re-inventing soul & blues songs in the fresh new ska and reggae format which had burst out big a year or two earlier in the UK, and to a lesser extent the USA, not least thanks to the Windrush generation. This was a big UK hit, and the central message of black pride struck a note with everyone who liked reggae and/or supported the sentiment. That wasn’t me in 1970, due to being out the country, but by 1974 I’d heard it and loved it, and it was a huge hit in my charts shortly after this poll as it was reissued and almost made the charts again. It’s a great song, and a great performance. The music industry paid close attention to this poll, as will become very very clear as we go through the list and see how many of the higher-placed tracks became hits all over again in 1974/75 and beyond.
85. JAILHOUSE ROCK – Elvis Presley (1957)
Well, if any Elvis track deserves to be on the countdown it’s this one, The King at his most rocking-est, taken from an early movie that wasn’t just conveyor-belt romantic-fluff pap, and so good it topped the UK charts again in the next century. So, no complaints, just the question why it’s so low given the general Elvis invasion of this list – this is the 2nd of 10 tracks, and the 2nd-most deserving of the 10. It’s short, punchy, and famous, and at 17 years-old one of the oldest tracks on the list. If anything, it makes it look like male fans of 50’s rock weren’t voting in such numbers, so I can only assume they were either listening to Terry Wogan & Jimmy Young on Radio 2, or they were too busy at work to know about the poll. As a teen I had plenty of time to catch the radio (or today it would be streaming as well) and traditionally housewives would also have had more time for polls and stuff.
84. RIDE A WHITE SWAN – T.Rex (1970)
Well, this one swooped into like a game-changer in late 1970, as it set up Glam Rock as the next phase in UK pop, and as usual the bloody BBc wiped everything from the era, so no Top Of The Pops clip, or anything else from anywhere else of that period of the great Marc Bolan pouting like a hippie elf en route from acoustic Donavon to the Primary electric guitar pop star of the day. This track was the big T.Rex breakthrough and even charted in the USA albeit a minor hit, and was a perky crossover between the bongo-strumming Tyrannosaurus Rex, beloved of hippie DJ & mate John Peel, and out and out pop star, not beloved of John Peel who tended to look down on pop, like most musos of the time. Quite why this (great) track is on the list, and bigger, classic hits Hot Love, Get It On and Jeepster aren’t, is a mystery. I can only guess T.Rex fans were splitting votes over 6 or 7 tracks, and not listening to the rules by voting for hits from 1972 and 1973! Hey ho!
83. RUNAWAY – Del Shannon (1961)
At the top end of the US Teen Idol post-rock’n’roll invasion, Del Shannon had his hits using his band member’s trademark clavioline electric keyboard “fairground” sound, and were generally uptempo angst-ridden tales of lost love, Runaway being the biggest and best of all of them, and a genuine Hall Of Fame classic. It was great then, it’s still great now, though less-well-known – Kasabian gave a good old go at a live cover on Dermot O’Leary’s show in 2011, but it’s yet to get a prime movie spot or the like to give it a new generational boost. Del was pretty popular in the UK with hard-core fans voting an obscure track that was never an A side and had been entirely forgotten about by 1974, never mind 2021, much higher in the list, just to smash any credibility of genuine overall popularity. Fan clubs, eh, tch! He was probably on tour or something.
82. LOVE GROWS (WHERE MY ROSEMARY GOES) – Edison Lighthouse (1970)
A tropical Singapore pop smash for me, where I was living at the time it was a hit, in the housing suburbs a few miles from RAF Changi, so in my mind it’s multi-coloured, lush nostalgia and a fab UK pop song that rattles along beautifully, written by hit songwriters Tony Macauley (see Build Me Up Buttercup) and Barry Mason (more to come on him) and sung by Ultimate Studio vocalist Tony Burrows who featured in the UK charts under many guises from 1967 through 1974 (many of them simultaneously, 3 in the case of early 1970 when this topped), but this was his biggest. I’m peeved the TOTP clip is in black & white, but at least someone rescued that episode on videotape. I’d also rate his other tracks, The Flowerpot Men’s Beach-Boys-ish Let’s Go To San Fransisco, and 1974’s Beach Baby under the band name First Class. Still quite popular, and a genuinely good inclusion, though I’d doubt it would make a top 100 of the era these days.
81. JULIETTE – The Four Pennies (1964)
Harking back to an earlier musical period in style, Juliette was a sweet tune, and one I loved as a 6-year-old-Doctor-Who-and-Pop-music-obsessed kiddie living in Chesham, about as far from London on the London Underground as you could get. Even as late as 1974 this old-fashioned sentimental harmony tune was still giving me waves of nostalgia and joy – and apparently lots of other people too – though it’s bizarre being 16 and getting all nostalgic for stuff from 10 years before, that very much did sound very old-fashioned by then. I’m still fond of it, a bit, but let’s be honest, these largely one-hit wonders have been forgotten in the 21st century, and there is no way it would make a top 500 Best Of The 60’s in any poll these days, let alone top 100 of 1954 to 1972.
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