Last Breaths: Cliff Richard and the Shadows: "Do You Want To Dance/I'm Looking Out The Window"

This presents two rather different versions of the Cliff Richard Experience; an experience which is rooted in the 50s (those lock-steps that he does with the Shadows) and yet the same song, as done by the Beach Boys just a few later (I cannot help but mention my fellow Californians, particularly since Dennis is singing lead here) is a song that verily defies you not to dance; the Cliff Richard/Shadows version sounds as if maybe you'd want to do a brisk minuet or perhaps the stroll, at best. I know it is unfair to jump into the future here, but the future in 1962 was very close to appearing; in a way this seems like the last breath, the last relic before something is about to happen - something that Cliff and the Shadows will bravely live through and endure in their own ways. But in the meantime, here they are doing their dance and being the polite and lovable rockers that they are.

And now we have Cliff's future, and thus a way out - a gentle mourning hum, softly hoping and waiting, the Shadows like a beneficent sun on Cliff's focused pain. He sits in his suit (a suit he claims to wear every day, just in case - not visible here, just audible here, alas) and sings the words as if they were almost too awful to sing. How can he be second best? How can he have fallen for someone who treats him like this? The main problem here is that Richard is just, lest we forget, 21 and cannot really be suffering as much as he claims here; but again the poignancy of this is that he can see into his future, wherein he is always there, ready and well-dressed and waiting, but no one calls; at the time this may have been just a song, but songs have a way of becoming uneasy reality after a while. The girls presumably loved this one and rightly found Richard too beautiful to suffer; Cliff and the Shadows' dancing had everyone happily tapping their toes. However it is late June 1962, and while heavy smog descends once again on London, Algerians are about to gain their independence and the Port Huron statement is written, printed and distributed across the U.S.; the polite world that Cliff Richard and the Shadows represent is coming to a close, with rougher and wilder voices just edging in from the wilderness.

Love in Limbo: Pat Boone: "Love Letters In The Sand"

As the saying goes, there are two kinds of people - in this case, they are separate in the ways they look at the past. The first kind regards it with respect and affection, but they keep their distance from it, too. The past is valuable to them for what it can give them, the lessons and ideas and the whole treasure trove of curious and wondrous strange things 'they' did 'then'. The past here is connected to the present in a million ways, very much like a piece of fabric.

The other kind is much more sentimental and even nostalgic, to the point where the past is far more alive to them than the present and the idea of weaving the past into the future is nearly unimaginable. They may even try to do the impossible - to bring the past back and have things 'just as they were', as much as possible.

This song sits awkwardly between these two kinds of people; its very nonchalance - the first thing you hear is whistling, after all - points to a kind of casual 'keep calm and carry on' attitude that either betrays a rather cold-hearted figure who is unable or unwilling to commit (who writes letters in the sand? The very medium, if I can call it that, suggests impermanence, which goes against the "vow" made on the beach. I know very well that (young) lovers can and do find significance in the most ephemeral and trivial of things, but it's not like writing implements and paper didn't exist in 1957).

There is also the chance, of course, that Boone is in a kind of mindset wherein a broken vow doesn't really mean that much in the greater scheme of things - not so much a Buddhist acceptance of loss as more a Christian conviction that this girl obviously wasn't righteous enough for him, so there is no love lost. Boone sings so lightly and politely that it is hard to hear any heartbreak at all in the song; he sings like a wooden doorstop, all whistling near-indifference, the band behind him fruitlessly trying to inject some notion of what sensual walks by the surf have been lost. But Boone remains by the ocean, seemingly in a kind of limbo, somehow both nostalgic and cut off at the same time. (For those of you wondering, yes there is more Pat Boone to come, but not for a little while.)

(It is worth noting that this was a big transatlantic hit song; it is also worth noting that the two songs which leapfrogged it to number one were all about sexual urgency and intense hormonal longing - "All Shook Up" by Elvis and "Diana" by Paul Anka. Once again, the number two song is utterly in opposition to what is at the top.)