I’m posting this because it’s been languishing in the archives for a while. I also realize that The Four Seasons group isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not my favorite cup of tea, but they did have some good songs, and among the best is this one. (I also like “Walk Like a Man” and “My Eyes Adored You,” the latter marred by the execrable line, “Walking home every day over Barnegat Bridge and Bay.”)
“Who Loves You”, released in 1975, wasn’t written by Frankie Valli but by Judy Parker and Valli’s longtime songwriter Bob Gaudio (writer of, among other songs for the group, “Sherry”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Walk Like a Man”, “Dawn (Go Away)”, “Rag Doll”, “Bye Bye Baby”, and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”). This video is labeled “official music video”, and may be lip-synched, but still shows the recording group. Yes, the clothes are atrocious Seventies quasi-disco garb, but so what? This is still way above the vast pile of pap that presently passes for pop.
What I like about this song is the unusual intro, with the cymbals giving way to the group’s patented vocal harmony. There’s also a much longer musical break than usual for the group. AND. . . . it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. Seriously, this is the kind of song that makes you want to get up and dance immediately, like the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back.”
You might want to put in the comments below the songs that always make you get on your feet. I’d like to hear what people have to say.
There’s a mangled version of this song in the movie “Jersey Boys” (2014), directed by Clint Eastwood (!). It’s a strange movie, with good bits ruined by the actors narrating to the camera.
I hoped this would be a Telly Savalas! Post!
😉
No; that would be “Who loves you, baby?”
Close, but no er… lollipop!
You weren’t alone.
I agree but this was one of their lesser known:
“December 63” is my favorite Four Seasons song, in part because Frankie Valli DOESN’T sing lead. I never liked his screeching-sorry!
As for a song that makes me want to dance: “Call Me” by Blondie. “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple always makes me strum my air guitar.
I love the Four Seasons, and this is my favorite.
I was on my feet. He was not.
The last he heard from me minutes before he was dead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de5Xauv99QM
Blue
That great, I was going to put ‘Nutbush City Limits”
If I could dance, I’d choose La Bilirrubina
It’s always interesting to find old nuggets like this and interpret them in light of what I’ve learned in the meantime, and further, to find what and how exactly the elements make the song so singular.
The first two LPs I ever owned were Sherry by the Four Seasons and Chubby Checker’s The Twist.
In the early Seventies I went to Ft. Lauderdale on spring break and hooked up with a flight attendant (or “stewardess” as I think they were still called in those days). She was making pretty good bank with her job; I was a broke-ass college boy. She wanted to take me out on the town to see Frankie Valli — by then touring as solo act — who was doing a show at a local nightclub. I turned it down, partly because I wasn’t comfortable with her picking up the tab, but mainly because Frankie Valli seemed to me at the time as about the squarest thing a cat could do.
One of my favorite Four Seasons’ tunes back in the day was their cover of Opus 17 (aka “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me”).
I like to argue that the greatest pop song in my lifetime is Sugar, Sugar by The Archies. It was the Billboard Magazine #1 song song of the year for 1969. Think of all the great music from that year. Sugar, Sugar had no famous faces, names, nor an actual band. All if the success is based on a great song, with a great production.
That said, the song that always gets me to turn up the radio, (and risk a speeding ticket), is This Beat Goes On / Switching to Glide. Fun fact, this was the project Bob Ezrin took on right after finishing The Wall.
https://youtu.be/sxkjvKBPQjo
Diggin’ that bubble-gum, huh, Paul?
Yes, maybe the number one bubble-gum
I always hated “Sugar Sugar” until I heard this version by Wilson Pickett. I’m pretty sure it’s a case of “the singer, not the song”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrZluYnMJUY
The wicked Mister Pickett did a great cover of “Hey Jude” at Muscle Shoals, too, with Duane Allman on guitar.
AND a wicked cover of Born To Be Wild
So are they singing to the baby, or the momma?
That is the only time I’ve ever purposely listened to that song. It’s not quite corny enough for me to like it. I did like seeing them playing though.
I can’t think of any song that makes me wanna cut a rug. I’m a lumbering oaf and too shy to dance but Cuban music makes me wish I knew how.
Ooh! I just remembered one, The Brothers Johnson, Strawberry Letter #23! Very groovy.
“The Brothers Johnson, Strawberry Letter #23!”
I like the song for the female backing voices.
You want pop? I’ll give you pop:
https:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M584bP_FeE
That’s doo-wop. A good example, but the best example is “Come Go With Me” by the Dell Vikings:
Another great tune from that era is “The Wonderer” by Dion & the Belmonts.
Hell, when I first heard that tune as an 8-years-old, I was sure someday I’d grow up to BE Dion DiMucci. 🙂
Vivaldi is kid’s stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YipD8Npugvg
No, not that one. This one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLYAlcmeulE
Dang, now that I’ve seen it, I still don’t believe it.
Everyone probably knows this, but Antonio Vivaldi composed a set of pieces titled The Four Seasons in the Baroque era, that is, 18th century.
I think it’s easy to hear a band name – e.g. The Four Seasons – with hit songs – and somehow forget the connection…. like a suspension of disbelief of sorts… and eagerness to hear something new…
For “can’t keep my feet still” music I like a lot of 50’s and 60’s New Orleans pop. Anything by Huey “Piano’ Smith makes me want to move!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgoMuSutw7I&list=PLQfqPI7wbqj0GZMUa23vFO-sfAmcRdmMP
The Crescent City had some great piano players — Dr. John, Professor Longhair, Allan Toussaint, and Fats Domino among them.
Going all the way back to Jelly Roll Morton!
Someone who comments here regularly, I think it’s Gary Miranda, has written about Jelly Roll Morton (maybe a play or a movie script, I can’t recall exactly, but I remember him mentioning it).
Technically, I couldn’t get up and dance when I first heard Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Guy rock out on “Hadicol Boogie” since I was driving, but the song just knocked me out and I played it again and again without a pause for over two hours!!! It still gives me a thrill.
youtube.com/watch?v=grCp35e963A
You want tunes that’ll get person on their feet, my dogs’ll vote every time for a couple of funk classics — “Brick House” by The Commodores and “Word Up” by Cameo.
Both excellent.
Aside from dancing, there are two Franki Vallie songs that I just love:
Rag Doll, which gets a lot of play still, and this one, which is very simple and yet it haunts me.
Cheesy atmosphere, but it works!
Oh, and these two, if the most disco-y of all disco is your thing. Dead people will dance to this back to back pair. Must be played loud.
Boney-freakin’-M?
But they’re the ones who ruined The Melodians’ great reggae tune “Rivers of Babylon”!
But now you can dance to it.
AND a wicked cover of Born To Be Wild
Since we’re going down memory lane, one of my top three groups is the Seekers from Australia, with the incomparable Judith Durham. They performed together, on and off, for about fifty years. Here’s an example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoaAb5MnKtY =
” You’ll never get me out on the floor. ”
But the thing is: … … ¡ you will !
Blue
👍 And I’ve always liked this:
Anybody’s ever been though this kinda bad breakup has to appreciate Mr. Seger’s “Sunspot Baby”: