Skip to main content

There Was A Balm In Philadelphia To Make The Wounded Whole: “You Make Me Feel Brand New” by The Stylistics

By Marcello Carlin


It was the group’s last Thom Bell collaboration, their last American top ten hit and probably their most famous record. Bell then concentrated on working with The Spinners, leaving The Stylistics in the merciless candyflossed hands of Hugo and Luigi, under whose direction they went on to score most of their biggest hits in Britain (because of Britain being Britain). Originally appearing in its full length on their third album, 1973’s Rockin’ Roll Baby, a slightly edited version was deposited in the middle of their fourth album, 1974’s otherwise Hugo and Luigi-dominant Let’s Put It All Together, and promptly put all else on that record to shame.

I have really nothing more to say about the record except to note in passing that here we have two very carefully-enunciating voices which sing different parts of the same song but never connect – hence, the voice is both ego and id, Cupid and Psyche – and that a somewhat clunky lyric sung with serene but truthful conviction will always trump devious lyrical couplets whose accompanying tune you forget while it’s still playing. This could so easily be a Hallmark greetings card, but with the subtlest of touches Bell and the singers turn it into a morning in the life of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series.


Date Record Made Number Two: 15 June 1974
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2
Record At Number One: “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero” by Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods
UK Chart Position: 2

Comments

  1. Mark G17 April 2018 at 05:59

    In the UK this came out as the b-side to "Only for the children" and they appeared on TOTP with that one first - but it got nowhere. Someone flipped it, it took off, and I guess that's why it got added to the forthcoming album even though it had already appeared on the previous one. It used to happen a lot, using a previous album as b-side sources - see also Kraftwerk and "The Model"

    ReplyDelete
  2. David Ellis17 April 2018 at 13:25

    A truly great song 😊

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Threads Of Alligator Lizards In The Air: “Purple Rain” by Prince and The Revolution

By Marcello Carlin
The original idea was for a country-style collaboration with Stevie Nicks, to whom Prince sent a ten-minute instrumental backing track, asking her to come up with some lyrics. However, Nicks was overwhelmed by what she heard and feared that the task was too much for her to take on, so the song was reworked in rehearsal with The Revolution, utilising Wendy Melvoin’s guitar phrasing as a new guideline. The song appears to have existed before the film; Purple Rain the movie is best described as lucid hokum, but its soundtrack changed the atoms which constituted “pop,” far more so than much ostensibly radical music of the period. For many of that decade’s generation, Purple Rain the soundtrack was “our” Ziggy Stardust – better conceived, performed and produced in every way – and the title song, which closes the album, was “our” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide.” It is such a patient epic, the song, and about a lot of things, and people – each of the verses addresses a different su
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tales Of November Come Late: “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot

By Marcello Carlin
In many ways, this is a strange and rather old-fashioned song for the mid-seventies, even though the events which it describes were then only a year old. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was for over seventeen years a Great Lakes freighter, transporting pellets of iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other Great Lake ports. On the afternoon of 9 November 1975, under the command of its Canadian captain Ernest M McSorley, the ship set sail from Lake Superior, bound for Detroit. But an early storm broke the following day; the ship filled up with water and then capsized – or possibly split – and sank, and although the wreck of the ship was found a few months later, none of the bodies of its twenty-nine-strong crew has ever been found. It sank in Canadian waters. Lightfoot read an article about the disaster in Newsweek , which helped unlock his long-standing writer’s block and inspire the song. He tells the story as simply as possible, though acco
Post a Comment
Read more

Christian Calm From Canada: “Put Your Hand In The Hand” by Ocean

By Marcello Carlin
Following the hushed turbulence of What’s Going On? , it’s perhaps a relief to turn to a straightforward, uplifting religious song, one which you probably sang at school (I certainly did), even though it was never a hit in the UK. Written by Gene MacLellan, who was born in Quebec, grew up in Toronto and eventually moved to Prince Edward Island, “Put Your Hand” was first recorded by the former gym teacher from Nova Scotia, Anne Murray, on her debut album (Murray’s first international hit “Snowbird” was also a MacLellan song). But it was the Toronto-based group Ocean who made the song a hit single. Possibly their most significant member was bassist/singer Jeff Jones, who was a founder member of Rush before making way for Geddy Lee, and who later went on to work with Tom Cochrane in Red Rider. Janice Morgan (later Janice Penfield) sang lead, however, and the band give the song a finely noble reading; there is something about the wearied patience of their performance that puts
Post a Comment
Read more