Date: July 16, 1966
Weeks: 2
This is more like the type of music I expected to encounter a lot of in the 60s. Its sound is about halfway between the Beatles and the Beach Boys, without achieving quite the exciting enthusiasm of either band.
The biggest problem with this song is the chorus. "My baby does the hanky panky" over and over and over again. The line repeats 10 times to open the song, happens 5 more times in the middle, and then happens 5 more times at the end, before fading out as they sing the line over and over into eternity.
And then once I identified the repetitive chorus, I realized that what I thought were two verses were actually the same verse repeated twice. This would have been a great 1 minute song, but they unnecessarily stretch it out to 3 minutes, resulting in the longest 3-minute song I've ever heard.
Not that there's anything really wrong with the music in general. It's a pretty typical guitars-and-drums 60s rock song, with a decent guitar solo in the bridge. It's performed fairly well, and even though it sounds a little rough around the edges, it's probably more accurate to call its sound raw. But the music provides no reprieve from the repetition, since it just repeats itself along with the associated lyrics.
And they never even explain what they mean by "hanky panky." Is he just bragging that his girlfriend has sex with him? Is that supposed to be controversial just for the sake of controversy, or is there another message here that I'm missing? Oh, on consulting the Internet, it appears the Hanky Panky may have been a 60s dance that time has since forgotten.
My verdict: Don't like it. It has a decent sound, but sometimes less is more. Or, in this case, more turns out to be less.
No comments:
Post a Comment