The song that defeated The Beatles and The Jacksons in one year
The UK charts have always been strange and full of surprises, and while you’d think that they should be used as an indicator of genuine popularity and talent, that’s far from always the case. Acts such as The Beatles might well have had a significant amount of hits and achieved longevity through their chart success. With 17 number-one entries during their initial run as a group, they couldn’t always make it to the top of the charts, no matter how hard they tried.
For example, songs like ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, which were released as a double A-side together in 1967, are considered two of their best songs. However, as far as the UK singles charts were concerned, they only merited a peak position of number two and lost out to Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘Release Me’. Similarly, the double single of ‘Something’ and ‘Come Together’ only made it to a measly number four in the charts in 1969, and while the controversial lyrics of the latter may have played a significant part in its failure to reach the top, they’re still regarded as being among the best from the Liverpudlian group.
When you consider the fact that ‘Yellow Submarine’ managed to achieve what neither of the aforementioned releases did and found its way to the top, you have to call into question what it is that the general public sees in a song to help it achieve the number one spot. By The Beatles’ standards, it’s far from their best, and yet people were willing to overlook this and assist it on its journey to the top, where it remained for four weeks.
Sometimes, the public seem to get swept up in novelties, and the sheer uniqueness of a song can often propel a song to number one regardless of whether it’s truly worthy of such an accolade. This is ultimately why the phenomenon of the one-hit wonder exists, and if there’s an individual selling point that a song possesses over any of its competitors, then there’s a reasonable chance of it toppling a classic or shielding it from the recognition it deserves.
In 1969, the release of the film adaptation of the musical Paint Your Wagon, starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, saw an eventual single release of Marvin’s rendition of the song ‘Wand’rin’ Star’ in 1970, and while Marvin was not a talented vocalist by any stretch of the imagination, something about the song captured the hearts of the British record-buying public, and it remained at the top of the UK charts for three weeks.
While this unusual rise to the top isn’t exactly an abnormal achievement on its own, the fact that it managed to keep The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ off the top and have to settle for number two is remarkable when you consider how highly-regarded the McCartney-penned ballad is in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps even more remarkable, however, is the fact that this wasn’t the only coup that ‘Wand’rin’ Star’ managed to claim for itself, and during its trio of weeks at the top, it managed to also stave off competition from The Jacksons’ ‘I Want You Back’.
The film itself wasn’t even a success, but the soundtrack seemed to have some sense of magnetism to it. The fact that the single release of this shoddily-sung, if somewhat endearing, song managed to prevent two of the biggest and most popular songs of all time from being hits in the UK is a remarkable achievement, even if both The Beatles and The Jacksons have every right to be aggrieved at its success at their expense.
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