Will We Be Together, Someday?: “When Will I See You Again” by The Three Degrees

The first of just two appearances by the Philly sound of Gamble and Huff, but this already sounds like an elegy for an age; barely two years into their run of success, Philly already sounded as though it were saying farewell here – the elegiac Cinemascope strings, the hymn-like enunciation of the song’s title. Essentially it’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” grown up and saddled with a mortgage, but with tomorrow’s promise still distant and opaque, although the physical distress is more pronounced (“Will I have to suffer and cry the whole night through?”).

Listening to the record, it’s clear how its axis is Bobby Parker’s electric piano, which simmers, frames and provides the cooling waterbed undertow to offset lead singer Sheila Ferguson’s contained paranoia and suppressed rage. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that this is one of the very few major pop hits whose lyric, backing vocals and ad-libs notwithstanding, consists entirely of questions. As 1974 draws to a close, the unasked/unanswered question might be: will you still need us in 1975?

Date Record Made Number Two: 14 December 1974
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 1
Record At Number One: “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas
UK Chart Position: 1
Other Information: On British television in 2006, the song was used to soundtrack a Food Standards Agency advertisement warning of the dangers of not cooking your sausages for long enough on the barbecue. “When will I see you again?” they query. “Sooner than you think if you don’t cook them properly,” the caption retorts. Precious moments indeed)

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