Happy birthday to Petula Clark, seventy years old today, who sings one of my favorite songs ever, "Don't Sleep in the Subway." Although it was a modest chart hit in 1967, I had never heard it until a few years ago when I was making a New York City mix for two friends who were about to move to Brooklyn. I looked for songs with "subway" in the title and it popped up. Listening to this song for the first time (the first several times, actually) was a delight-ambush: it starts off perfectly enough, with its brisk, cool, bustling first verse, but then it suddenly switches up into a grandiose orchestral cry, and then, whoa!--a steep dropoff into the minimalist chorus, like a reverse Pixies, all hush and pizzicato.I played it again and again and again.
Nothing else in her oeuvre sounds quite like this or grabs me like this. But this is so perfect I couldn't ask for anything else.
Petula Clark, "Don't Sleep in the Subway"
1 comment:
modest? number five pop US, number one easy listening US, number 12 uk pop....grammy nomination for best female vocalist....
she still sings it in concert
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