Steam – “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” (1969)

He might be thrillin' baby, but a-my love

So dog-gone willin', so kiss him

Go on and kiss him goodbye

[NOTE: The Genius.com website has this to say about the lyrics of this song:  “Not all pop rock songs have [lyrics with] very deep meaning.”  (No sh*t, Genius.com.)  Nevertheless, this one-hit wonder went all the way to #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in December 1969, and is a deserving choice for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  Here’s a lightly edited version of the original 2 or 3 lines post about this record, which appeared in 2017.]

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In 1977, Chicago White Sox stadium organist Nancy Faust started playing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” whenever White Sox hitters knocked an opposing pitcher out of the game.

Pretty soon, other stadium organists began to play the song to serenade departing hurlers.

The song is still a staple at all kinds of sporting events.  It has also been sung by politicians from both parties to taunt their opponents.

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Nancy Faust wasn’t the first person to use Steam’s song to heckle visiting teams.  That honor goes to me and several of my Parkwood High School friends, who got the bright idea of playing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” on our kazoos in the waning minutes of basketball games when our school’s team led by a safe margin.

We called ourselves the “Kazoo Krew,” and were quite taken with ourselves.  Fortunately, we had a really good basketball team that season, so we had plenty of opportunities to gloat by playing the Steam hit and otherwise acting like the obnoxious little smart-asses that we were.

Here’s a picture of the kazoo that each of us wore on a ribbon around our necks at games that year:

A kazoo is played by humming into the larger end of the instrument.  It makes a nice little buzzy sound, although it doesn’t produce a lot of volume.  

The Kazoo Krew made enough noise to be quite annoying – especially to the many girls in the Pep Club and their advisors, who seems to think they had a monopoly of cheering for the home team.  (Get over yourselves, b*tches!)

I wish I still had my kazoo, but I'm sure my mother threw it away years ago.  THANKS A LOT, MOM!

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In 1968, a singer named Gary DeCarlo recorded four songs for Mercury Records.  His friend Paul Leka produced the four tracks, which impressed the folks at Mercury Records enough that they decided to  issue all four as singles.  

Singles need B-sides, of course.  For one of the B-sides, DeCarlo and Leka decided to use a song called “Kiss Him Goodbye” that they had written in the early 1960s when they were members of an obscure Connecticut doo-wop group.

The late Gary DeCarlo in 2014

Leka thought the song was too short, and needed a chorus.  “I started writing while I was sitting at the piano going ‘Na, na, na, na . . . na, na, na, na,’” he told an interviewer years later.  “Everything was ‘Na na’ when you didn't have a lyric.”  DeCarlo came up with the “Hey, hey,” and the rest is history.

B-sides are usually ignored by DJs.  But DJs started playing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” and it reached #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in December 1969.  

Guess what record it displaced in the top spot?  “Something”/“Come Together” by the Beatles.  (Hooray!) 

The record was attributed to a group called Steam, but there was no such group.  With Leka’s help, Mercury put together a group of musicians to record an album and go on tour to exploit the single’s popularity.

DeCarlo didn’t hit the road with that group.  Leka said that DeCarlo was embarrassed by the record, and didn’t want to perform it in concert.  But DeCarlo says he was squeezed out of Steam by Leka and Mercury.

Gary DeCarlo died earlier this week of lung cancer.  He was 75 years old.  

Click here to listen to “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” which is one of my all-time favorite one-hit wonders.

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Three Dog Night – "One" (1969)

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do

Two can be as bad as one

It's the loneliest number since the number one

[NOTE: Three Dog Night's cover of "One" was one of the first recordings to be featured in a 2 or 3 lines post.  Here’s a lightly edited version of my original 2010 post about "One," one of this year's inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.] 

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"One" was Three Dog Night's first big hit.  I vividly remember hearing it on the radio while sitting in a Central Missouri State University dorm room during Missouri Boys' State in the summer of 1969.  

I'm not writing about it because it's a perfect little 3-minute AM-radio song ("PL3MAMRS") – although it is – but because I hope I can chase down an old rumor I've wondered about for years.

I heard that the committee that planned the 1969 junior-senior prom at Parkwood was having trouble deciding which of two bands to hire to play at the dance.  The band that was eventually chosen was a local favorite, the Pink Peach Mob (one of whose members, Steve Gaines, later joined Lynyrd Skynyrd and was killed in the 1977 crash of that band's airplane).

The story goes that the other band was Three Dog Night, an up-and-coming California group that would have cost a lot more money to book than the local guys.  Later, of course, Three Dog Night hit it very big, and everyone who went to the dance missed out on being able to bore their friends, co-workers, children, and grandchildren with the story of how a hugely successful band – they had eleven top-10 hits (including three number ones) – had played at their high school prom.

Maybe Three Dog Night was a candidate to play at the 1968 prom, not the 1969 one as I've always heard – looking at the band's recording history, 1968 would work a lot better.  

Surely some of my Joplin readers know whether this is a true story or just an urban legend.  Please -- post a comment and help me clear this up once and for all.

By the way, I see that Three Dog Night played at the Downstream Casino this past July 4 – so they did make it to Joplin, just 42 or so years late.  

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"One" was written by Harry Nilsson, a very good but very odd singer-songwriter.  If you don't believe me, click here and give a listen to his song, "You're Breakin' My Heart":

You're breakin' my heart

You're tearin' it apart

So f*ck you!

Nilsson's biggest hits were "Everybody's Talkin' " (the theme song to the movie "Midnight Cowboy"), "Me and My Arrow," and "Without You," which was a #1 hit in 1971.  But my two favorite Nilsson songs – both from the 1972 Nilsson Schmilsson album – were "Jump Into the Fire" (which was featured during the scene in "Goodfellas" when Ray Liotta is driving all over town with a bunch of guns in his trunk while a helicopter appears to be following him) and "Coconut" (which was featured in the closing credits of "Reservoir Dogs"):

You put de lime in the coconut, you drink 'em both together

Put de lime in the coconut, then you'll feel better 

Click here to watch a truly bizarre video of "Coconut" from a 1971 BBC television special.

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Nilsson released "One" as a single a year before Three Dog Night did.  Click here to listen to his version of the song, which went nowhere – it's a lovely recording, but no chance it was going to get played on the radio in 1968.  

Click here to listen to the Three Dog Night version of "One."

Click on the link below if you'd like to buy the recording from Amazon:

Tammy Wynette – "Stand By Your Man" (1968)

‘Cause after all

He’s just a man 

[NOTE:  “Stand By Your Man” reached #1 on the country and western charts late in 1968, and the Country Music Television cable network named it the greatest country music song of all time – a judgment I agree with 110%.  It’s the first country record selected for induction into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME, and it may be the last.  But “Stand By Your Man” did crack the top 20 on the pop charts, so it qualifies as a hit single for our purposes.  What follows is an edited version of the original 2 or 3 lines post about this record, which appeared on February 9, 2013.]

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I hate to pick a fight with the fairer sex (which is and always has been my personal favorite among all the sexes), but a lot of purportedly intelligent women got this song exactly backwards.  

And yes, I'm talking about Hillary Clinton in particular, who famously told a 60 Minutes interviewer in 1992 that “I’m not some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.”  (Of course, that’s exactly what Mrs. Clinton did do a few years later when it was revealed to the world that her husband was enjoying the clandestine ministrations of the 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky.)

Hillary Clinton sitting by her man in 1992 

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If anyone should take exception to Ms. Wynette’s song, it’s not women –  it’s men.  

That’s because the essential message of this song is that men are undisciplined and selfish creatures – on about the same level as infants and dogs when it comes to morality and controlling their bodily functions.

When a baby boy spews strained peas all over his mother, that doesn’t surprise her – after all, he’s just a baby.  

And when a puppy poops on the rug, the lady of the house just cleans it up without getting angry – after all, he’s just a dog.

The message of “Stand By Your Man” is that a woman should be equally tolerant of her man’s bad behavior – after all, he’s just a man.   

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Perhaps cheating husbands deserve to have their asses kicked out of the house by their long-suffering wives.  But where would society be then?  

Men already watch too much football on TV, eat a lot of crap that will eventually kill them, and spend every available moment surfing the ’net for porn.

(By the way, when someone watches porn, what is it that first captures their attention?  A 2007 study found that women on oral contraceptives focus on the actors’ clothing, background imagery, and other contextual aspects of the porn – not the genitals.  Women who were not on the pill looked first at genitals, then turned their attention to the female body or bodies – but didn’t look at anyone’s face.  Men looked at genitals, but spent more time looking at female faces.  Go figure.)

Without the civilizing influence that comes from their living under the same roof as wives, men would do that bad stuff 24 HOURS A DAY and the world would go to hell in a handbasket.

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Or at least we men like to think so.  In reality, women could do very well without men – other than providing a needed Y chromosome on occasion, we are much more trouble than we are worth.  Ants and bees and other social insects have figured out how to minimize the role of males and still survive quite nicely, and it would serve us men right if women did the same to us.  

Fortunately, most of them are like Tammy Wynette.  We treat them badly and are more trouble than we are worth, but they are as tolerant of us as they are of their children (who can also be a gigantic pain in the tuchus, but are inconveniently necessary for the survival of the species) – they look the other way and turn the other cheek, all in the interest of promoting the greater good.

Tammy Wynette didn’t necessarily walk the walk when it came to putting up with the men she was married to.  Fellow country music superstar George Jones was her third husband (she had five altogether), and she put up with his drinking and other nonsense for only six years before filing for divorce.  Standing by her man George was all well and good, but at some point, enough is enough!

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“Stand By Your Man” is featured in the opening credits of one if my all-time favorite movies, Five Easy Pieces (1970).  In that movie, Karen Black’s character – who has a room-temperature IQ but a heart of gold – gets knocked up by her boyfriend (portrayed by Jack Nicholson), a child prodigy on the piano who had run away from his wealthy, cultured family to slum it as a roughneck in the California oil fields.

Mr. Jack and Ms. Black in “Five Easy Pieces” 

Nicholson’s character proves he is all man by cheating on and abusing her verbally and physically before he learns she is pregnant  . . . then cheating on and abusing her verbally and physically her after he learns she is pregnant. . . and eventually deserting her at a gas station out in the middle of nowhere.  

Five Easy Pieces was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and both Nicholson and Black were nominated for acting Oscars as well. 

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Tammy Wynette, whose 1998 death was caused by a pulmonary blood clot, was born in 1942 in rural Mississippi.  She grew up on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing under the care of her grandparents.  (Her mother had moved away in search of economic opportunity.)

After going to beauty college, Wynette got a cosmetology license and worked as a hairdresser until she got a recording contract in 1966..

Tammy Wynette’s name – she was born Virginia Wynette Pugh – came from the 1957 film, Tammy and the Bachelor.  Record producer Billy Sherrill – who suggested that Wynette change her name after she signed a record deal in 1966 – said that the long, blonde ponytail she was wearing when they met reminded him of the one Debbie Reynolds wore as the character Tammy Tyree in that movie.

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Click here to hear Tammy Wynette’s recording “Stand By Your Man” – which is as perfect a pop single as has ever been recorded.  

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Beatles – "Hey Jude" (1968)

The movement you need

Is on your shoulder

Paul McCartney had this to say about those lines from “Hey Jude” in The Beatles Anthology, which was published in 2000:

I was in the music room upstairs when John and Yoko came to visit and they were right behind me over my right shoulder, standing up, listening to it as I played it to them, and when I got to the line, “The movement you need is on your shoulder,” I looked over my shoulder and I said, “I’ll change that, it’s a bit crummy. I was just blocking it out,” and John said, “You won’t, you know. That’s the best line in it!’”

Thanks, Sir Paul – that ‘splains it!

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Of all my nerdy extracurricular activities in high school, none was nerdier than the “Mathematical Puzzles and Recreation Club.”

Here’s the description of the club that was published in our high school yearbook:

Lost identities, forgotten logarithms, and baffling power equations tried the competence of members of the Mathematics Puzzles and Recreation Club.  Monthly meetings became sessions of enjoyable learning when the program committee revealed each masterpiece of mathematical computation.

(That is some bad writing, even for a high school yearbook – no great surprise given that most of our yearbook’s writing staff were student newspaper rejects.)

A ten-member team from chosen from the club’s members to compete against teams from other local high schools in an after-school math league sponsored by the local state college.  According to the yearbook, our team – whose members are pictured below – “consistently won top honors” in that league. 

Members of my high school math team
work on our slide rule technique

One spring evening in 1970, we were enjoying a delicious repast in the college cafeteria prior to collecting our trophies at the league’s annual awards ceremony when my best friend and I came up with a brilliant idea.

When we saw that the master of ceremonies was about to start handing out awards, we hurried to the cafeteria jukebox, dropped in a dime, and selected “Hey Jude.”

It took the MC a little time to make his way to the podium and arrange his notes and the other accoutrements for the upcoming ceremony.  

He then listened patiently to Paul McCartney’s dulcet tones for a minute or two – perhaps not realizing that “Hey Jude” is seven minutes and eleven seconds long.

The coda of “Hey Jude” – the part with the oft-repeated “naa-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey Jude!” line – lasts about four minutes.  I don’t think we were very far into the coda when the college powers-that-be who were present huddled and decided upon a strategy.  

One of the members walked over to the jukebox, pulled it a foot or two away from the wall, and unplugged it.  

Sayonara, “Hey Jude.”  (We hardly knew ye!)

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McCartney and the Beatles’ producer, George Martin, were worried that “Hey Jude” wouldn’t get much radio play because of its extreme length.  But John Lennon – who said that radio stations would play the record “because it’s us” – turned out to be right.

“Hey Jude” became the Beatles’ 16th #1 hit record in September 1968.  It held down the top spot on the Billboard “Hot 100” for nine weeks.  (Only six other records – including Elvis’s “Don’t Be Cruel/Hound Dog,” Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life,” and Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” – were #1 for longer.)

Jimmy Webb, the composer of the one and only “MacArthur Park,” visited the Abbey Road Studios shortly after “Hey Jude” was recorded.  He says that George Martin told him that it was no accident that “Hey Jude” was one second longer than Richard Harris’s unforgettable recording of Webb’s masterpiece. 

Martin thought highly of Webb’s music, and Webb greatly respected Martin’s ability as a producer.  Here’s a photo of the two men working together in a Los Angeles recording studio in 1976:

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Click here to watch the Beatles performing “Hey Jude,” which is the second Beatles’ record to be inducted into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Rolling Stones – "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (1968)

I was crowned

With a spike right through my head

If you wanted to explain to an extraterrestrial visitor why the Rolling Stones were all that, you could do a lot worse than play “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” for him, her, they, or it.  

Keith Richards was responsible for coming up with most of the classic Stones riffs – like the one in “Satisfaction” – but bassist Bill Wyman came up with this one while noodling around on an organ.   

The Rolling Stones in 1968

The Stones know a good thing when they hear it – they’ve included “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” on the setlist of every one of their many tours since it was released the week of my 16th birthday.

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Jagger biographer Philip Norman had this to say about Mick’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” lyrics:

[In “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” Jagger] hit on an answer to the problem of being a songwriter who chose to reveal nothing of himself in his lyrics.  This was to create a character he could assume like a role in a play, one that bore no resemblance to him . . . yet was a perfect distillation of his public self in all its manic energy, sexual ambiguity, and sneering cool.

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Keith Richards has said that the song’s title was inspired by something he once said about his gardener, Jack Dyer.  According to Keith, Dyer went clumping past the window of the guest bedroom of his country house early one morning and woke Mick Jagger, who was visiting.  When Jagger asked what the noice was, Richards replied, “Oh, that’s Jack – that’s jumpin’ Jack.”  

But someone who posted a comment about “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” to the Genius.com website a couple of years ago had a more sinister explanation: 

A “Jumpin' Jack Flash” is a heroin injection into the tear duct. Verse 3 is all about this: “Drowned/left for dead” is strung out; “feet bled” is bleeding from injections to veins in feet when arm veins are exhausted; “frowned at the crumbs” is the loss of appetite when strung out; and the “spike right through my head” refers to the injection into the tear duct.

That don’t sound right to me, but I’m no expert when it comes to heroin-related stuff.

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Does “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” belong in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME?  No doubt about it

Click here to listen to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” which was a #1 hit single in the UK and but peaked at #3 in the U.S.   

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

James Brown – "I Got You (I Feel Good)" (1965)

I f-e-e-l good

I knew that I would

Today we welcome James Brown – a/k/a/ “Soul Brother Number One,” “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” and “The Godfather of Soul" – to the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADES” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.

Brown absolutely dominated the Billboard R&B singles charts during the 2 or 3 lines “Golden Decade” years of 1965 t0 1974, with no fewer than 42 top ten singles – 16 of which went all the way to #1.

There were no stations that programmed soul music in Joplin, Missouri when I was growing up there in the sixties.  Hell, there was only one top-40 station, and it was a low-powered AM station that signed off each night at sunset.

James Brown was only an occasional presence on that station.  While most of his biggest-selling singles charted on the Billboard “Hot 100,” they usually peaked at much lower chart positions – meaning they got played much less often on top-40 stations.  A total of 91 Brown singles made their way into the “Hot 100” – the most ever by an artist who never had a #1 hit.

Today’s featured song went all the way to #3, which was the highest “Hot 100” position ever for a James Brown song.  I don’t remember hearing it in 1965 – the year it was released – but it became a ubiquitous presence in movie soundtracks (including The Big Chill, Good Morning Vietnam, and Garfield: The Movie) and on television shows (including The Simpsons, Punky Brewster, and Full House).

“I Got You (I Feel Good)” has also been used in numerous TV commercials, including this one for Autolite spark plugs, which aired in 1990. 

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All the records by black recording artists that have previously inducted into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME were released on Motown or Tamla (which was a  Motown subsidiary label).  

James Brown with Johnny Carson

“I Got You (I Feel Good)” was released on King Records – a Cincinnati label that initially specialized in country music.  (The label’s advertising slogan was "If it's a King, It's a Hillbilly – If it's a Hillbilly, it's a King.”)

Click here to listen to “I Got You (I Feel Good)”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Roy Head and the Traits – "Treat Her Right" (1965)

She’s gonna love you tonight now

If you just treat her right now

[NOTE: Roy Head’s 1965 hit, “Treat Her Right” – which takes it rightful place in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME TODAY – out-Elvises any record Elvis Presley ever released.  Is it a stick of dynamite?  Actually, it’s a stick of dynamite squared . . . maybe cubed.  I originally posted about “Treat Her Right” on September 3, 2019 – here’s a lightly edited version of that post.]

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I’m not a young man, and my prostate isn’t what it used to be.  So I purposely didn’t buy a drink to take into the theatre where I recently saw the new Quentin Tarantino movie – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – which is a bladder-busting two hours and forty-five minutes long.  

Once Upon a Time includes everything but the kitchen sink . . . and Tim Roth’s performance.  

Roth made memorable appearances in three previous Tarantino movies (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and The Hateful Eight), so it’s no surprise that he was signed up for Once Upon a Time.  

But Roth’s character ended up on the cutting-room floor.  His name is listed in the credits, but there’s nary a frame of 35mm film of Roth in the final cut of Once Upon a Time.

But be of good cheer!  Rumor has it that Tarantino plans to release a four-hour-long version of the movie that will include not only Roth’s missing scenes but also a bunch of other stuff he felt compelled to cut from the version of the movie that’s currently appearing in theatres.

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The Ringer’s Miles Surrey recently ranked the 20 most prominent characters in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  I think he did a pretty good job.

The #1 and #2 spots, of course go to the film’s two megastars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.  I love the always-likable Pitt’s loosey-gooseyness, but DiCaprio’s performance as a fading network-TV leading man is remarkable.  

DiCaprio and Pitt

Leo is usually a little too cool for school, but he absolutely disappears within one of the Western bad guys he depicts in Once Upon a Time.  (If I had seen only his scenes as that character, I’m not sure I would have recognized him as DiCaprio.)

Surrey also gives high marks to Margot Robbie (who portrays Sharon Tate), to eight-year-old scene-stealer Julia Butters, and to Pitt’s ugly pit bull (who saves the day when Charles Manson’s crew comes calling).  Fair enough.

But Margaret Qualley deserves a much higher ranking.  Qualley, the most memorable of the several dozen Manson Family girls depicted in the movie, is simply irresistible as a hippie Lolita with dirty feet and hairy armpits.  When she hitches a ride with Pitt’s character and immediately propositions him, Pitt asks to see her driver’s license to make sure she is of age – a display of superhuman self-discipline that is as impressive as it is implausible.

Margaret Qualley

Surrey is absolutely right to rank Lena Dunham (who portrays another Manson Family girl) dead last.  

It’s not exactly a tough call.

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“Treat Her Right,” a 1965-era stick of dynamite, kicks off the Once Upon a Time soundtrack.

If you didn’t know better, you might think that “Treat Her Right” was an Elvis Presley song.  But Elvis never released a record this good.

Roy Head’s not only a great singer but a great dancer – click here to watch a mind-blowing TV performance of “Treat Her Right.”  (Eat your heart out, James Brown.)

Please note that Head is wearing a tie and a buttoned suit jacket.  Despite his frenetic dancing, there’s not a hair on his Brylcreemed head out of place at the end of his performance. 

“Treat Her Right” made it all the way to #2 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1965.  The song that kept it out of the #1 spot was “Yesterday.”  (Really?)

As political commentator Charlie Sykes once said, “Life isn’t fair.  Get used to it.”

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Zombies – "She's Not There" (1964)

Please don’t bother trying to find her

She’s not there!

The Zombies’ debut single, “She’s Not There,” made it all the way to the #2 spot on the Billboard “Hot 100” the week of December 12, 1964. 

The Beach Boys, Beatles, Kinks, Rolling Stones, and Supremes all had singles in the top ten that week.  Each of those groups was far more successful than the Zombies, who had had only two other hit singles (“Tell Her No” and “Time of the Season”) before breaking up in 1968.

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“She’s Not There” was written by the Zombies’ keyboard player, Rod Argent.  

The best thing about the song is Argent’s keyboard work.  He played a Hohner Pianet, an electric piano that was first manufactured in 1962 and can also be heard on “Louie Louie,” “I Am the Walrus,” “These Eyes,” “Joy to the World,” and a number of other hit singles.

A Hohner Pianet electric piano

The Hohner Pianet had 61 keys, which ranged from F1 to F6.  (A standard piano has 88 keys.  The Hohner Pianet is missing the piano’s lowest eight keys and highest 19 keys.) 

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“She’s Not There” is a good example of a song whose lyrics aren’t that impressive when you read them on the printed page, but which work beautifully in the context of the recorded song.  

For example, here’s the chorus:

Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked

The way she acted, the color of her hair

Her voice was soft and cool

Her eyes were clear and bright

But she's not there

Not to be a nitpicker, but I would have ditched the initial “well” – you might as well start things off with a “you know.”

The singer promises to tell you about the way she looked, the way she acted, and the color of her hair – but he doesn’t.   And he describes her voice as “soft and cool” and her eyes as “clear and bright” – that’s pretty generic.  So you’re left with only a vague idea of what the femme fatale who is the subject of the song is like.

But no matter – it all works when you hear it, and God knows that few of the hit singles from this era have lyrics that are better.

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I was a seventh-grader when “She’s Not There” was released.  

I must have really liked the record because I paid cash money for it – and I bought very few singles.  (I’d be surprised if I bought as many as a dozen 45s altogether.  But the ones I bought were money – e.g., Bobby Lewis’s “Tossin’ and Turnin’,” Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve,” and the Four Seasons “Rag Doll.”)

Click here to listen to “She’s Not There” – the first member of the 2021 class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.

Click below to buy the record from Amazon: