Herman's Hermits – "I'm into Something Good" (1964)

I asked to see her next week

And she told me I could

Something tells me I’m into something good

At the recent Pourhouse Trivia playoff finals, the host played snippets of three pop songs, and asked us to identify the women who wrote each of them.

The first clip that was played was an excerpt from the 1964 Herman’s Hermits recording of “I’m into Something Good.”

One of my teammates threw out Carole King’s name as a possible answer.  That made sense – King and her then-husband Gerry Goffin wrote a number of hit songs in the sixties, and “I’m into Something Good” sounded like it could have been one of theirs.

But King and Goffin were a team, and I understood the question to be looking for a solo female songwriter – not a male-female songwriting duo.  

Carole King and Gerry Goffin in 1959

After she divorced Goffin in 1968, Carole King moved from New York City to Los Angeles and eventually recorded her legendary Tapestry album, which included a number of songs she wrote by herself.  But I knew the Herman’s Hermits song dated from the time when King and Goffin were still married and writing songs together.

As it turned out, Carole King was the answer they were looking for.

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Later that day, I fired up Wikipedia and learned that Carole King and Gerry Goffin had, in fact, co-written “I’m into Something Good.”  

I wrote to Pourhouse Trivia to point that out, and got this response:

We were aware of this fact when creating the audio question, which is why we used the phrase “credited as a songwriter” in the question.  All three songs from that question were co-written by teams comprising men and women.  I don't understand why your team assumed that the answer needed to be a solo songwriter.

The questions at the Pourhouse Trivia playoff finals were read by the host.  But they were  also printed on slides that were projected on a large screen so all of the fifty teams that were competing could see them.  

Here’s the slide with the Carole King question:

The question does ask for “the woman credited as a songwriter” – not “the woman credited as the songwriter.” 

On the other hand, the question’s headline – which was printed in a larger font than the rest of the question, and was also in all caps – was “SHE WROTE THAT,” which implied that a woman wrote each song by herself.  

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I spent the first third of my legal career working on consumer protection matters at the Federal Trade Commission, and the rest at a law firm with the biggest advertising law practice in the country.

My bread-and-butter work at my law firm was reviewing advertising copy and telling my clients whether it was at risk of being challenged as being false or deceptive.  If I thought it was problematic, I would suggest appropriate revisions to reduce the legal risk. 

If the Carole King question had been an advertisement that a client had sent me for review, I would have suggested that he revise its language to make its meaning clearer.  

Here’s one possible revision:

QUESTION 1: SHE CO-WROTE THAT

For each of the following songs, identify the woman credited as a co-writer of the song.  Please note that none of the correct answers is heard in the clip.

Here’s another possible revision that would have taken care of the problem:

QUESTION 1: THEY WROTE THAT

For each of the following songs, which were written by male-female songwriting teams, identify the female co-writer.  Please note that none of the correct answers is heard in the clip.

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Most of my clients pushed back when I advised them to make changes in their ad copy.  They might defend their original language, or propose minor edits that didn’t go as far as my suggested revisions.

Let’s imagine how the discussion with the client might have gone if I had proposed the changes noted above:

Client:  I don’t understand why you think the question needs to be changed.  We ask people to identify the woman “credited as a writer” of the song.  Carole King was “a” writer of the song – we didn’t say she was the only writer of the song. 

Me:  I agree that the “credited as a writer” statement is literally true.  But I think the government would view your language as deceptive.

Client:  But you just said the “credited as a writer” line is true.  So how can it be deceptive?

Me:  The government focuses on the overall net impression of what you say rather than just its literal truthfulness.  They would evaluate your question based on what claims they believe the average person would take away from it.  The government would view the question as deceptive if its total impact was misleading – even if every individual statement in it was technically true.

Client:  It’s not our fault if people don’t read the question carefully and end up misunderstanding it.

Me:  The government would say that if people misunderstand your question, it is your fault – not theirs.  You need to write the question so it’s the meaning is clear and unambiguous.  

Client:  How do they know how people interpret our language?  Wouldn’t they need evidence that people are actually being deceived?

Me:  Not really.  They view themselves as experts on how the average person would interpret the question – so they don’t need actual proof of deception.  You could try to gather data that proves them wrong, but that’s not easy to do.  And one more thing: keep in mind that you might still lose even if your evidence showed that the majority of people understood the question correctly.  If a substantial minority of people are confused, that’s enough for the government to win its case.

Client:  So why did you suggest the changes you did? 

Me:  The big problem with your question is its heading: “SHE WROTE THAT.”  I think that the typical person who read that would assume that the song was written by a single female – not by a team, and especially not by a team that included a male.  That’s why I suggested changing that language to either “THEY WROTE THAT” or “SHE CO-WROTE THAT.”

Client:  But we really like “SHE WROTE THAT” for the heading.  Can’t we throw in a disclaimer of some kind in a footnote?

Me:  As I said, the government looks at the net impression of the question as a whole.  So it might be possible to add a disclaimer that cures the possible deception caused by the “SHE WROTE THAT” heading.  But that disclaimer would have to be clear and conspicuous.  In other words, the qualifying language must be clear and unambiguous in meaning.  You can’t use confusing “legalese” – and you can’t bury the disclaimer in the fine print at the bottom of the question where it might go unnoticed.

Client: What about if we stuck with the “SHE WROTE THAT” heading and changed the rest of the language as you suggested – “For each of the following songs, identify the woman credited as a co-writer of the song,” or  

“For each of the following songs, which were written by a male-female songwriting team, identify the female co-writer.”

Me:  That would be a step in the right direction.  But the government could still argue that the meaning of the heading wasn’t consistent with the meaning of the rest of the question, and that the overall net impression of the question as a whole was confusing.  If the heading is misleading, that’s hard to overcome.

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Pourhouse Trivia runs trivia contests seven days a week, with a different set of questions each day.  That means they have to generate thousands of new questions each year.

Generally speaking, their questions are very good.  But no one’s perfect, and occasionally a question that’s worded in a somewhat confusing way slips through their screening process.

I think that the wording of the Carole King question was a bit ambiguous.  But at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter.  

We only lost one point by not answering that question correctly.  So it wouldn’t have made any real difference if we had gotten it right – we were still destined to finish out of the money.

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“I’m into Something Good” was first recorded by Earl-Jean McCrea, who had previously been a member of the Cookies – a New York City-based R&B girl group who had their biggest hit with “Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad (About My Baby),” another Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition.  

It seems that Goffin and Earl-Jean had had an affair while he was still married to King that resulted in her becoming pregnant and giving birth to a daughter.  (King stayed with Goffin for several years after the affair came to light, eventually divorcing him in 1968.)

Earl-Jean’s version of “I’m into Something Good” made it to #38 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in early 1964.  Herman’s Hermits covered the song that summer.  Their version was #1 hit in the UK, but peaked at #13 in the U.S.

Click here to listen to Earl-Jean’s “I’m into Something Good.”

Click here to buy the Herman’s Hermits cover of “I’m into Something Good” from Amazon.