This is another song I first learned from my beginner's piano pieces book (the same book I learned 'I Know a Place' from). It wasn't until years later I heard it for real, and I've still heard it maybe less than five times in my life. What I'm saying is, it never was played on oldies radio and only rarely on mellow hits/dentist office/elevator stations. IMO, it's OK, but not my speed at all. I also think it goes on too long, but I can tolerate it.
I know someone else will mention this, but: Midnight Confessions comes to mind. Top five hit about a guy who wanted to connect with a married lady, although it sounds like he didn't.
WMGK is one (several) radio stations I listened to around that time (I was in northern Delaware then). I don't remember this particular occurrence though.
Now I can't stop thinking of Me & Mrs. Jones as a sequel/riff on Ballad of a Thin Man. Well played, sir!
Joni Mitchell also wrote Both Sides Now and Woodstock, which were hit singles for other artists in 1968-1970 timeframe. Another song of hers that was covered by a lot of artists was Chelsea Morning. I don't know if that ever was a hit single for anyone, though.
Are any cheating songs ever played on oldies radio today except for "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes?
I think this particular era has a lot of songs that don't get played that often, at least in my experience. I never hear Ben and most America songs get rarely played. Cher's later #1s are ignored, etc.
Terrible lyrics, but I do admit that when I'm in LA and driving on the highway, this song always flashes through my head when I see the sign for the Ventura Highway.
Yeah, I meant to bring him up when we were in '72. I recounted my intro to him on another thread and it goes like this. One day in '72 I was browsing in my favorite record store when I suddenly heard the strains of To The Morning wafting out of their sound system. Those delicate notes stopped me in my tracks and I made a bee-line to the register to find out who this was. Needless to say, I went home with that debut album and have been a fan ever since. It would take another couple of years for him to break on the airwaves but this song was a beautiful start to Fogelberg's career.
Speaking of whom . . . her latest release, "Been To Canaan," was reaching its peak of #24 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Easy Listening (later AC) chart around this time.
It has? Where? Simon is remembered for a few hits and (maybe) one album (No Secrets). That's it. Like I said, Geffen knew what he was doing. Albums are where the action - and the money - was at by this point, as Simon's complaint about Geffen's promotion inadvertently revealed. Again, Geffen and other executives realized this going into the '70s, which is why they began to focus their attentions on acts - like Zep, Floyd, Mitchell and others - who could move a lot of albums regardless of what their singles sales looked like. A hit single or two can move a lot of copies of an album, but the real money is made off of acts who can sell truckloads of albums without a big hit single. That required the kind of consistency most acts couldn't manage. You can't cram an album with a bunch of throwaway junk when the album is the product, and not just a couple of hit singles with some filler. It might also explain why disco had such a short shelf life and such a revolving cast of characters during the same period. A very singles-focused genre, apart from collections like the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, disco didn't spawn a slew of top-selling albums and didn't engender the kind of artist-following base you got in the rock world. Even acts with acts who had no shortage of hit singles like Elton John or Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles - or Stevie Wonder, for that matter - managed to pump out compelling whole albums.
If you consider Elvin Bishop's "Fooled Around and Fell In Love" to fit the mold -- I have heard that one sometimes (I haven't studied the lyrics of that one -- I'm just going by the song title)
One interesting factoid about a bunch of American acts hitting the charts during this period - like Carly Simon, the Eagles and even America - they were cutting albums in London. This is how Mick Jagger presumably turned up on "You're So Vain". I suspect some of this might have been prompted by favorable exchange rates - as I recall the pound had fallen considerably against the dollar during this period, so presumably production budgets would have gone further in London than in New York or Los Angeles. But you also had a critical mass of musicians kicking around England in the post-Beatles wake, as well as several world-class recording studios.
I have to confess I didn't know before the last few days that Mick Jagger was even on the record. In my defense, I never heard the song on anything but the radio in our car. I certainly liked it, but I've never owned it. Now that I listen on my system - even with the youtube source - I can't believe how loud they mixed him! He does blend well, but I guess they were like "We got Mick here, we're going to make the most of it."
Why don't we just agree that both Carly and Joni are fantastic artists in their own right, come to a kumbaya moment and move on?
This is what really pushed Elton into that "superstar" realm - he consistently created compelling hit singles AND albums one after the other for years. Not only were the albums compelling, if you bought one cause you liked a couple of the singles, the deep cuts were even more absorbing. And here we sit in 1973 and he still hasn't had a #1. But, that's just more evidence of how little the top spot can mean for some songs and artists. Nevertheless, it's a fun topic, and it's really almost the only way to organize a thread and cover this many years of pop.
Love that record, it's a shame it didn't chart higher. Her Hot 100 success really cooled off in '72 - '73 after a red hot '71. Tapestry kept rolling off the shelves though.
It wasn't just in London - there were some records where as many as five (give or take) studios across the country and sometimes around the world were used to cut just one song.
Give it up, man! You are wrongo! You are no musical historian. Singles and top 40 radio were HUGE business in the 70s. Why do you keep trying to deny or ignore this FACT?
I think a difference there is that the protagonist in the song isn't clearly in any kind of committed relationship. he just plays the field.
