#335) "Sad Eyes" by Robert John - For the longest time, I thought (assumed) this song was a Bee Gees song; it would seem to fit perfectly in their wheelhouse, right down to the high vocals. But it was released in 1979, around the height of the Bee Gees' fame, and by then the brothers Gibb had long forsaken the likes of "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" and "I Started a Joke" for trendier, and radio friendlier, hits like "Tragedy" and "Stayin' Alive".
I also thought for a long time that Robert John was British, doubtless a Bee Gees-related assumption, but he's American, Brooklyn born, and also, with "Sad Eyes", as much a one-hit wonder as there has ever been.
"Sad Eyes" was his only song to hit #1, and this comes as no surprise to me because it's pretty lovely, as ballads go. It drapes over everything, in a good way. I like that it's not an anguished break-up song, at least not for the guy. He's been having an affair with someone, and now his girlfriend or wife is coming back and he's looking for as clean an "out" as is possible. I'm not saying he's not a cad, but I enjoy the emotional timbre of the song, its note of hope for the future, the suggestion that every exit is also an entrance to someplace else, and you can never really go wrong with that slow, horse-trot beat. I like the guitar solo as well; it's simple, but sometimes simple sings the best.
"I never used you, you knew I really cared..."
#336) "'65 Love Affair" by Paul Davis - I was 11 when this song was released. I remember vividly it spilling out of tiny radios and mini-boom boxes all over the neighborhood for a few months, along with Eddie Rabbit and Alabama and Juice Newton, and I remember feeling its melancholy, its longing for days past, even though I didn't have a lot of my own "days past" at the time. I felt it not because I was a super sensitive sage at 11 (I wasn't), but because the song so vividly captures what it's looking to capture in its lyrics and melody: being young and being in love for the first time, in a world that will one day be looked back on as much smaller than it felt at the time, in the days when "rock and roll was simple and free."
Moreover, "'65 Love Affair" always struck me as historically accurate. 1965, maybe '66, might very well have been the last time rock and roll could be considered simple and free, right before the Sixties, as we remember them, exploded. To that end, no joke: I think, "Doo wop, diddy wop, diddy wop, doo", as it's presented in "'65 Love Affair", is one of the greatest lines in any pop song ever.
"Well I acted like a dumb-dumb / you were bad with your pom-poms..."
