It Was The Third Of June…

“…another sleepy, dusky, Delta day.??? Thus did Bobbie Gentry begin her masterpiece, Ode To Billy Joe, one of the strangest songs ever to be a number one hit. Everything about the record, the heatwave shimmer of the strings, the measured, deliberate plucking of the guitar, the sultry languor of Gentry’s vocal and, above all, the slow, southern gothic of her lyric simply oozes the essence of the American South. At the time, 1968, it was one of the longest singles ever to be a hit. In fact, it’s only 4:14, though it seems longer; this is no criticism, rather an acknowledgment of the way it seems to slow time down to its own deliberate pace.

As evocative as To Kill A Mocking Bird, as tragic and mysterious as Faulkner, it is one of the songs in the direction of which one can point those who tell you that all pop music is meretricious fluff (yes, one does still occasionally meet these people, though admittedly most are retired Colonels).

In fact, it is an example of one of my favourite types of records, those that are so utterly at odds with the prevailing rules of pop that they’ve been and gone from the charts before you realise just how very peculiar they were. Years later you hear them on the radio some afternoon as you queue to be served in a sandwich bar, and you think “Christ, I remember that one!???. And only then do you reflect that this song had no business anywhere near the charts. “Billy Joe???, ballad of suicide, heartbreak and possible infanticide (I say possible, because the song is opaque on the matter, but Sinead O’Connor’s version makes this assumption explicit) was a US No.1 for something like eight weeks, during a summer of riot, radicalism and psychedelia.

The eighties charts, home to tinny, shallow synthesiser ditties still found a home for a lament about Scottish emigration to the States, an epistolatory examination of waning friendship and geographical isolation, and a state-of-the-world address culled from a single day’s headlines. Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha was a tribute to a Bollywood diva, which filled floors even as it introduced to the mainstream an idea of what it was like to grow up Indian in Britain. Eminem’s Stan is the tale of an obsessive and ultimately murderous fan.

Any one of these songs are about as far from what’s traditionally conceived of as “pop??? as it’s possible to get, yet all were big hits, somehow striking a chord with their times. So don’t despair when you watch the chart countdown and see nothing but novelty songs and dance mixes of eighties hits. Play the long game, and it all comes into perspective. When the dreck of the charts has gone to its eternal home, a few imperishably peculiar pop classics will remain, to jolt us out of our complacency as we wait for our BLT some afternoon.