Chop Chop: Brian Poole and Tremeloes, The: "Someone Someone"

The taste of the British public puzzles me at times; I cannot tell, for instance, if this song did well because it is so utterly inoffensive as to have no character at all, or because of the performance here, wherein the singer - a drip of a man, judging by this - is more or less ignored/mocked by his own band. The song - a post-Holly Crickets b-side - is thin gruel to begin with, but some singers have ways of taking inane songs and making them mean something; Mr. Poole doesn't. Perhaps the Tremeloes know something that he doesn't?

In any case, this serves as an inter-band example of the schism happening in UK pop, wherein some people are solid as sides of beef (eventually Poole went back to his original calling, being a butcher*) and others are all about the giddy enjoyment of just being there, like chefs being happy at their work. I am amazed that this song - on evidence a big hit - did better at the time than "My Guy" or "Chapel of Love" - but then time has a way of figuring out what is worth keeping around and separating the temporarily useful (as a last-dance song, for instance) from the ultimately not necessary in the long run. The 60s are heating up to a sizzle and there is no time for warmed-up leftovers like this.



*Instead of being a butcher of songs, some might say, though on evidence he sings songs as if he has already put them in the cooler.