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who wants to hear MY LEAST FAVOURITE NUMBER ONES OF THE 1950S
HEY LADY
I mean sure
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cool OK here we go. in no order other than chronological
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The Stargazers - Broken Wings
garbage bird metaphors sung by a turgid popular choir.
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amusingly this is the first UK act to ever get a UK number 1. they will always be that but they will never be listenable.
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Vera Lynn - My Son, My Son
weird, leaden wartime hangover devoid of all emotion except glurge, though I will grudgingly admit the reverb on Vera's voice is lovely
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Ruby Murray Softly Softly
this is a sex song with the same vibe as a grandma selling toilet paper. i know they'd invented sex by this point. marilyn monroe was real. presumably this was for grans?
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Pat Boone - I'll Be Home (1956)
the face of the machinery of racism.
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Cliff Richard - Living Doll #HIGH QUALITY SOUND 1959
OKAY SO THIS IS LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST. This is, simply, one of the worst songs ever recorded.
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i was listening to a lot of 50s music and I can confirm that no, the sexism in this song was not a product of its time. nothing else in the charts at this time was this sexist.
Luke Skywanker
I can't wait to listen to these, but I want to know what compells you
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the basic joke of the song is that women were casually referred to as 'dolls', so he sings about a woman as if she were a toy. cute. except. horrifying.
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'look at her hair, it feels so real' this should NOT have got out of the planning stages
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even if we write off the 'lock her up in a trunk' line as being intended as a joke (like 'i'm going to eat her up!'), note how the narrator isn't singing to the woman, he's singing to another man and encouraging him to feel her up, and bragging about it.
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add into that the hammered-flat fake-rock backing at a time when Buddy Holly had just died, taking the energy of rock 'n' roll with him. the smug, competent but nothing else delivery, somehow leery but squeaky clean at the same time, as if in the world that produced this song, locking women up in trunks was just part of a normal, healthy relationship.
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Before I started listening to all this 50s pop, I guess I'd been expecting a lot more stuff like Livin' Doll, so I'm happy to report that it's an exception.
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there's a couple of niceguy anthems that do feel like products of their time, and a lot of racism (both in the sense of using clueless but not unkind ethnic stereotypes, and the lack of black artists), but, mostly, the 50s charts are well balanced, and occasionally quite progressive (it's not uncommon for men to cover pop standards written for women)
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EMILE FORD WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAKE THOSE EYES AT ME...
this is the rapey niceguy anthem, btw, but it has nice performance and, hey, this is the first black man to top the UK charts with a song about sex!, so I'll give it leeway enough to keep it off my hell list
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oh dear, i'm not ready to assemble a worst list of the 1960s yet, but 1962 is turning out to be a veeeerrrry bad year
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Mike Sarne - Wendy Richard....Come Outside
this is what all British pop is going to be after Brexit
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(big CW for comedy sexual harassment on that one there)