What's your favorite song? Mine's "Sugar, Sugar." You know that song, right? It's pretty awesome, isn't it? It probably won't surprise you to hear that it topped the charts both in America and in the UK when it was released in 1969--but did you know that Billboard ranked it as the #1 single of the entire year? So, it beat out all singles released in 1969 by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder, for instance. When I was in high school I used to spend a lot of time riding around in my friend Jason's car, listening to 104.3 (which used to be an oldies station) on his disintegrating car stereo. Invariably "Sugar, Sugar" would come on at some point in the day, and we would turn it up and rock out. Back then we used to joke that "Sugar, Sugar" was the first indiepop song because the simple chord progression (C Major--F Major--G Major), the fuzzbox lead guitar, and the amateurish-sounding female vocal interjections reminded us of the songs on the 7 inches I had ordered from Slumberland and the Bus Stop Label. Actually "Sugar, Sugar" was the opposite of amateurish; it was written by Brill Building mainstay Jeff Barry, who also penned "Be My Baby," and (yes the sleeve of my copy of End Of The Century confirms he also wrote) "Baby, I Love You." Ellie Greenwich, Barry's partner in writing "Baby, I Love You" didn't help write "Sugar, Sugar"--but is one of the studio musicians who performed on the record. I could have guessed all of this stuff, but what I had no idea about is that The Archies, who "perform" "Sugar, Sugar" are the characters from Archie Comics, who somehow sang Brill Building pop songs on I guess a TV show. So that's why they didn't tour.
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