What was the first song performed by the songwriter to hit number one?
It wasn’t that long ago when the authorship of the biggest pop stars of the day’s chart-topping hits was of no concern to the eager record-buying kids.
Nobody cared, least of all the teens who have always been pop’s market demographic since the pop landscape was first burnished in earnest over 70 years ago.
The fact was, the songwriter was a pure music industry concern, an internal talent nabbed up by whatever label or production house that saw their lyrical pen as a route to hefty unit sales. Such a credit held little cache previous to rock and pop’s lightning bolt, plenty of stars pre-1955 covering big band jazz standards, film themes, Broadway numbers, or rifling through the folk and Tin-Pan Alley song bin as a mine for the next big hit.
Before the charts were truly standardised, a smattering of big names began to reel off self-written tunes, from Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. The idea of the self-contained band didn’t kick off in earnest until The Beatles, however. Prior to Fab Four domination and the ensuing British invasion, few 7” hoarders were looking at the acts before them as the creators.
Once Liverpool’s finest had rejected EMI’s initial push to release ‘How Do You Do It?’ – later to nab fellow Merseybeater Gerry and the Pacemakers a number one – the insistence to cut their own material would usher the decade’s veneration of the authentic, screaming fans yelping that bit harder knowing Paul McCartney or John Lennon’s fervent pop rush leaped straight from their alchemic magic.
In no time at all, music split a path between rock and pop, rock the respectable soundtrack to countercultural upend dreamed up by the new generation of creative radicals, and pop the successor to the doo-wop and bubblegum records of their youth aimed squarely at the kids, giving The Monkees a seriously hard time as they tried to chart a course somewhere in the middle.
The first song performed by the songwriter to top the charts
It actually happened pretty quickly. Over in the States, the Billboard Hot 100’s first launch in 1958 counted several singles featuring its writer and a performer, albeit adopting a sideman position. From August, when the charts were founded, ‘Nel blu, dipinto di blu’ counted co-writing by its Italian chanson singer Domenico Modugno, The Elegants’ ‘Little Star’ combined the lyrical talents of lead vocalists Vito Picone and Arthur Venosa off the famous lullaby, and The Teddy Bears’ ‘To Know Him Is to Love Him’ was written by the band’s guitarist, a teenage Phil Spector.
Yet, spending three weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart four years after its founding was 1956’s doo-wop pop classic ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’. The debut single from New York’s Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, the pop smash was handled by all its members, Lymon, Herman Santiago, and Jimmy Merchant, taking inspiration from the love letters shooting their way during their regional fame. Impressing Gee Records’ George Goldner, the teen pop outfit were catapulted to national fame virtually overnight off of ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’s wistful charm and caramel vocal harmonies.
