Why was "Something Stupid" by Frank and Nancy Sinatra a number one hit in the USA?

DCC Compact Classics # DZS-165 in 1998. It's just three songs: Two Frank & Nancy duets—"Somethin' Stupid" and "Feelin' Kinda Sunday" (from 1967)—and a Nancy solo, "It's for My Dad" (1977). It was a charity CD: "Proceeds from the sales of this CD will go to the Frank Sinatra Foundation."

One cool thing is that "Somethin' Stupid" is preceded by over one minute's worth of studio chatter. You can hear Frank suggesting changes to the volume and tempo. (Frank on guitar intro: "Pretty sound; that's the trick of the record.")

These are Nancy Sinatra's liner notes for "Somethin' Stupid" :

 

Boring fluff is what the top of the charts is usually about.

 

That song should have been a monster! What happened?

 

Let's not forget that while rock was obviously huge in the '60s, the Greatest Generation still exerted its buying power every once in a while, so there would occasionally be an Adult Contemporary smash.

"Somethin' Stupid" is one example, but "Love Is Blue" getting to #1 two years later is another as was Henry Mancini making #1 with "Love Theme From 'Romeo and Juliet'" in 1969 (it knocked "Get Back" out of the top spot). There were also lots of other AC hits by Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck, Herb Alpert, Sammy Davis, Jr., Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66, the pre-rock/disco Barbra Streisand, etc. I remember my grandparents listening to all of this on a radio station only they seemed to get at their house.

This stuff gets overlooked because rock was so revolutionary then and books like the Rolling Stone Record Guides have downplayed it or criticized it. But look at any chart from the era and there's lots of it there. As late as 1970 Perry Como was making the Top Ten with "It's Impossible" (he also got to #29 in '73 with Don McLean's "And I Love You So").

As for Frank, he was in the midst of a hit single comeback trail after he hooked up with producer by Jimmy Bowen. His string of smashes started in '66 with "Strangers in the Night" and continued with "Summer Wind," "That's Life," "Somethin' Stupid," and "The World We Knew." He also had big hits in '68 and '69 with "Cycles" and "My Way."

Sadly, none of the singles from 1969's Watertown set the charts on fire, but I digress...

 

A week-by-week list of 1967's #1 hits:

January 7 "I'm a Believer" The Monkees
January 14
January 21
January 28
February 4
February 11
February 18 "Kind of a Drag" The Buckinghams
February 25
March 4 "Ruby Tuesday" The Rolling Stones
March 11 "Love Is Here and Now You're Gone" The Supremes
March 18 "Penny Lane" The Beatles
March 25 "Happy Together" The Turtles
April 1
April 8
April 15 "Somethin' Stupid" Nancy Sinatra and Frank Sinatra
April 22
April 29
May 6
May 13 "The Happening" The Supremes
May 20 "Groovin'" The Young Rascals
May 27
June 3 "Respect" Aretha Franklin
June 10
June 17 "Groovin'" The Young Rascals
June 24
July 1 "Windy" The Association
July 8
July 15
July 22
July 29 "Light My Fire" The Doors
August 5
August 12
August 19 "All You Need Is Love" The Beatles
August 26 "Ode to Billie Joe" Bobbie Gentry
September 2
September 9
September 16
September 23 "The Letter" Box Tops
September 30
October 7
October 14
October 21 "To Sir With Love" Lulu
October 28
November 4
November 11
November 18
November 25 "Incense and Peppermints" Strawberry Alarm Clock
December 2 "Daydream Believer" The Monkees
December 9
December 16
December 23
December 30 "Hello, Goodbye"

Some really good stuff there, actually. I take back what I said earlier about "boring fluff."

 

Steve, the version that Bob posted in post #23 is the THE original. I have a promo of the KAPP album and here is the official story of how that song got to Frank ...

http://www.ccarsonparks.com/song_bio/somethin_stupid.htm

 

I forgot to add that C. Carson went on to write the huge Mills Brothers hit, "Cab Driver"!

 

It's just a good song, and a good recording. It's pop rock, like Windy or many other songs of the day that show influences from an earlier time (balladry, big band). Interesting that Frank Sinatra knew it would be a major hit. His instincts were good...

 

Maybe Frank's people made some calls and told radio that this song "is" a hit, ok! He had a lot of power. And there were hits that were bumped up beyond their real potential.

At least there is no Beatles or Elvis to get in the way of this one hitting the top.

 

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, April 30, 1967:

 

Another recent cover: Michael Bublé and Reese Witherspoon

 

And for those youngsters with no clue what this thread is about:

 

Me too.

 

Because people like "stupid" things.

 

I agree that it's ''fluff'', but not all fluff is boring, in this case it's definitely NOT.

Sometimes ''boring'' is in ear and mind of the beholder.

 

Thank you, Chris! That account by Carson Parks is priceless. I had seen it years ago, but I thought his website disappeared after Parks' death in 2005. Glad to see it's still intact:

—> C. Carson Parks: Musician, Songwriter, Music Publisher

And this link will get you Parks' own audio of his version of the song (via links at bottom right of page):

—> Somethin' Stupid by C. Carson Parks

 

Keep reading. I changed my mind later.

 

Well, it has a nice melody, that European lilt that Bert Kaempfert got mileage from. Frank too of course, especially My Way but also Strangers In The Night. All those minor slides from the horns and romantic phrases. At the same time, the song's lyric has the classic Anglo-American restraint about love, so it plays off that tension. The singer says, I had to spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you. I.e., hold in your emotions, this is the older tradition of popular music. It could have been dialogue in a Damon Runyon novel or "hardboiled" crime film. See?

 

Not odd at all, if you lived through that era. And, the baby-boomers, who were raised on that type of music, liked it.

I think too much is made over the boomers rejecting their parents music. It's a lie that is told so much that it has become the accepted truth.

 

I see the song as a kind of "revenge of the establishment", much in the way Adele, and Norah Jones, before her, topped the charts in a sea of contemporary dance pop.

 

There was a lot of music that we listened to in the 60's that us kids and our parents all liked, or accepted enough that it was played
on the living room stereo (remember that?). I also heard a lot of my folks music (Sinatra, Big Band) that I thought was o.k.
People back then couldn't crawl into their iPod with earbuds. Music was really "in the air". Was a great time, those days.

 

Well, I'd put it more that there is a lot more of the older musics in 60's music (especially) than many think.

The orchestral and horn arrangement in Something Stupid, which is very well-done, harks back to an earlier period. The song opens with an acoustic guitar solo, but the tune really is more a 50's romantic ballad. A lot of more obvious pop rock like Glen Campbell's songs, also the Association and many other bands, had these features. Some of the Mamas and Papas, Fifth Dimension. MacArthur Park, etc. This was huge in the 60's. "Go where you want to go, do what you want to do with whomever you want to go, yeah..". (This is the hip generation's approach to love, it left the hardboiled contain-your-emotion school behind. But the musical legacy of the past couldn't be so easily shed).

 

Well Sinatra did become uncool with the kids for a long while. Did you see Spinal Tap?

 

Sure! And, in the 70s, when we had Carpenters, Neil Sedaka, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Melissa Manchester, Billy Paul, and Bette Midler, among scores of others, we boomers liked their music, and it shot up the charts. they all had songs that were out of place among the Alice Coopers and Ohio Players of the day.

Now, in the 80s, this happened much less, but it still happened. Billy Vera & The Beaters had "At This Moment", Al Jarreau had "We're In The Love Together" and "Moonlighting, and Madonna had "Live To Tell".

 

I don't believe he was ever uncool with the youth. It's just that no one really talked about him. I'm just now thinking of the sone "On & On" by Stephen Bishop. I know 'ol blue eyes got a little boost from being in the lyric "Puts on Sinatra and starts to cry.".

Another song that probably seemed out of place to many back in the mid-late 60s is "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" by both Frankie Valli, and The Lettermen. There's also "Special Angel" by the Vogues that was a hit in...1968???? Let's not forget "Mac Arthur Park" by Richard Harris, also a top 10 hit in 1968.