EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by alphanguy, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    Simon first charted in 1964 with Winkin' Blinkin' and Nod as a duet with sister Lucy. It hit #73. Her first solo hit That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be debuted in April '71.
     
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  2. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be!
    :D
     
  3. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yeah, Carly had made it to the Top 10 with "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be", released in April of '71, but that was almost simultaneous with the release of "It's Too Late", which also came out in April of '71.
     
  4. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    It was actually Ode '70, and was known as such from 1970 - the year Adler set up his Ode label with A&M - to near the end of '71, basically. First-pressings of Ms. King's "Sweet Seasons" single (the first off her follow-up album Carole King Music) also were on that Ode '70 label design. She and Cheech & Chong basically made up for the loss of Spirit (Ode's biggest act to that point) to Epic.
     
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  5. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    My earliest memory of Ms. Simon's "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" was via a filmed early video of her, in an apartment near a window, singing it in an episode of The Great American Dream Machine on public TV (that'd be Channel 13 in my neck o' the woods).
     
  6. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    It's Too Late/I Feel the Earth Move

    Carole King is without question one of the most important songwriters of the sixties and seventies. Either along with her partner/husband Gerry Goffin or alone, she wrote an unbelievable list of great classics, including a bunch that we have already talked about on this thread. Check it out: they created songs like Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (while she was still a teenager!), Take Good Care of My Baby, Some Kind of Wonderful, the Loco-motion!, Go Away Little Girl, Up on the Roof, One Fine Day, I'm Into Something Good, Don't Bring Me Down (memorably recorded by the Animals), and You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman). They also wrote several great songs for the Monkees, notably Sweet Young Thing (co-written with Mike Nesmith), Sometime in the Morning, Take a Giant Step, Pleasant Valley Sunday, Star Collector and As We Go Along (a solo number) and Porpoise Song from Head. No less a personage than John Lennon once said that when the Beatles started, their biggest goal was to become another Goffin and King, and the group covered a couple of their songs on record and radio (specifically Chains).

    [​IMG]

    There is no over-exaggerating just what a huge, huge record Tapestry was in the early 70s. She had tried to become a singer earlier with little success, but when she finally hit, she hit in as big a way as you can imagine.

    I'll be honest. I've heard only a small smattering of the stuff she's done as a performer. I freely admit she's a pretty good singer, but I haven't yet heard the number done by her that sinks me as much as her stuff when covered by other artists (of course, if you are covered by Aretha, that's a big talent to live up to). As far as these two #1 hits we are talking about, It's Too Late is just a bit too mellow and seventies for my taste. But I Feel the Earth Move is another story. Man, that song kicks all sorts of butt! Like others have mentioned, I love the way the piano starts things with an immediate bang, and the song does not let up all the way through, until it finally starts to wind down very dramatically at the very end. That's one of my favorite pop song endings right there; a lot better than just fading the thing out!

    [​IMG]

    In the mid-nineties, Alison Anders wrote and directed a film called Grace of My Heart that was nothing less than a love letter to Brill Building pop singers. Ileana Douglas plays 'Denise Waverly', a thinly disguised homage to Carole King, who is married to a Goffin clone played by Eric Stoltz. There are also characters based on Leslie Gore and Brian Wilson (played by Matt Dillon! Yeah, that's some strange casting there). Folks who like that era of pop ought to check it out, you might just enjoy it.

    The centerpiece moment of the film comes as Waverly tries to go from being a pop writer to a performer (sound familiar?). With the help of Dillon/Wilson, she sings one of her songs, God Give Me Strength. It's actually a great number, written in real life by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach (and sung by Kristen Vigard with enthusiastic lip synching by Douglas). And here's that performance from the film. I think she passed the audition!

     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2017
  7. Damiano54

    Damiano54 Senior Member

    I don't recall even hearing of this version but it just occurred to me that ITL might
    be a good one for Lesley Gore. So YT revealed this.

     
  8. Black Thumb

    Black Thumb Yah Mo B There

    Location:
    Reno, NV
    Looking over the original Hot 100 charts, "It's Too Late" was the only side listed for the first five weeks. On June 12 when it hit #6, the listing changed to "It's Too Late / I Feel The Earth Move". That's how it stayed for the rest of the chart run, including the #1 weeks.

    Billboard's methodology at the time was to list both sides if both had "significant" airplay. Before 1970, the sides would've charted separately.
     
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  9. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't "I Feel The Earth Move" written in the wake of the Feb. 9, 1971 earthquake that hit the San Fernando valley?
     
  10. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    It's Too Late is okay but I don't really get the massive affection for it. So many songs I vastly prefer and which I consider much better did much less ...

    I haven't heard It Might as Well Rain Until September in years, so I'm YouTubing it as I type this post. It has a lot of nostalgia value for 1962 and I like songs with nostalgia value these days but for some reason I just rarely give it a listen.

    At the time in the U. K. there was another Carole King song that had not yet fallen off the charts when this one was released in 1962, but I can't remember what it was.
     
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  11. Tim S

    Tim S Senior Member

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    Nothing wrong with this, but it's almost a clone of King's own version. the phrasing is exactly the same on every line - I don't know when this was done, but if it predates King's release, my guess is Gore followed everything on King's demo exactly.
     
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  12. Damiano54

    Damiano54 Senior Member

    Yes, it really is just a remake of sorts. It was released on 1982 album, but I don't know the recording date
     
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  13. Tim S

    Tim S Senior Member

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    I loved both of these records to death. I bought the singles (probably from a woolworths, even though I have no idea where I might have gotten the money) and played them to death. As a kid these were the first songs that I remember thinking were very "grown up" - they had a depth I hadn't really noticed or thought about before. And in particular "That's the way" was incredibly mournful to me, which I was actually drawn to. Shortly after buying these, my mom bought 'Tapestry' (along with a gazillion other people) and it did not leave rotation at our house for years and years.
     
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  14. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" was a real jawdropper. It's very Joni-esque in the way it observes its characters' relationship predicaments (Simon was a huge fan), but with an almost Broadway-bent to it - huge drama. One of those truth bombs that gets chucked onto the pop charts every now and again, between all the insipid love songs.
     
  15. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    Couldn't be, Tapestry was released the next day.

    Was it "Take Good Care Of My Baby"? My understanding is "It Might As Well Rain Until September" was intended as a follow-up to that, but Don Kirshner liked the way her voice sounded on it too well to hand it off to Bobby Vee and put her version out instead. (Vee did record it, but it was only ever released as an album track.)

    Incidentally, Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us reports that the reason why King didn't have any more hit singles until Tapestry is that Gerry Goffin forbade her recording anything else. This is probably not true; numerous other sources (including King herself in her autobiography) say Goffin was, if anything, more supportive of her career than even she was at the time. The likelier truth is that with two kids at home, she simply didn't want to tour in support of her records.

    She did, though, record a few more singles, including this 1966 gem:

     
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  16. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    Carly's TTWIAHISB and Harry Chapin's Taxi always seemed cut from a similar cloth musically. They both have a mournful sound and came out within a year or so of each other.
     
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  17. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    Their early careers were intertwined. There was even talk of the Simon Sisters and Chapin Brothers recording together. It never happened, but they did perform together on occasion.
     
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  18. CliffL

    CliffL Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA USA
    I'm glad you said that, I feel the same way about those two songs. Also both were on Elektra. When TTWIAHITB was getting airplay on AM radio circa the early summer of 1971 it really caught my attention and I enjoyed the somber moodiness of the song, but for some reason the DJs never mentioned who was singing it and it had been out for more than a month before I found out it was Carly Simon (who I'd never heard of before).

    "Taxi" caused a bit of a sensation when it came out, it was a long "story song" unlike anything else on radio at the time. I bought the 45 and really liked it.
     
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  19. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!


    I heard plenty of Carly Simon on the radio in these parts, but didn't hear much of Harry Chapin except for "W.O.L.D." and "Cats In The Cradle". I didn't hear "Taxi" until I got it on CD about 20 years ago. No joke. I still don't know how it sounds.
     
  20. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Both of them came out of the folk/rock movement, didn't they?
     
  21. CliffL

    CliffL Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA USA
    Yeah, I remember I really liked W.O.L.D. a lot. "Cats in the Cradle" was probably his most popular song -I haven't checked but could swear it was a #1 it got so much airplay...its a bit too simple musically and nursery-rhyme lyrically for me though. I saw Chapin a lot on TV, he did a lot of charity work and I still remember his tragic early death in an accident.
     
  22. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Ya' beat me to that last point . . .
     
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  23. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    For me much drama comes from the echoing drums that occur at the beginning of the chorus
    (right before Simon sings the lines that all contain some variant of the phrase "it's time we moved in together").
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2017
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  24. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    I didn't hear "Taxi" at all in the '70s but did hear it in the '80s.
    Right before he died he had a song called "Sequel" (in 1980, I believe) which was a sequel to "Taxi". It was around that time that I first heard "Taxi".

    I immediately realized that the reason I didn't hear it in the '70s was probably because of the lyric "I fly so high when I'm stoned". The more mellow stations near me would never touch a lyric like that. I imagine it got airplay on the FM rock stations, but I can't verify that.
     
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  25. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    I apologize for bringing up Taxi since we're not quite there yet time-wise but since the discussion is now, I'm thinking the length of the song may also have had something to do with it's not being played a lot on AM radio. At 6+ minutes, that's a lot of airtime to devote to one tune and I'm not even sure if there was an abbreviated version the label could have sent out. At any rate, it got to #24 and that's an achievement in itself IMO. I'll also mention the violin (electric?) which reminded me of the sound they got on White Bird by It's A Beautiful Day in '69.
     
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