Pretty Little Black Eyed Susie
Guy Mitchell
Hit number 2: 1st May 1953
Kept of the top by: I Believe by Frankie Laine Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/5pkyXdB6Q0tzsjYgv2NjvV
After six months of what I imagine will be a notably long run (Time will tell) we finally have another song peak at number two and it's only bloody Mitchell again!
‘I love my pipe, I love tomaters
I love candied sweet pertaters’
Read that line again.
How does it grab you? Is it charming or unbearably twee?
I’m not keen. I think it’s meant to communicate the care free naïveté of new love, except, it’s from the perspective of a man who has clearly lived a life, who used to change his girl with every season.
So it makes it just seem a bit “Aw shucks!” A bit hokey.
And, I suppose, why not? It’s a lighthearted bit of fluff this song. It’s not a particularly enjoyable bit of nonsense though. It suits Mitchell’s voice more than our previous entry but I’d struggle to say it’s as good a song as ‘Feet Up’ which, if nothing else, has been lodged somewhere in my head for a couple of weeks.
It’s a kids song in style, less a musical number, it suits, more than anything else, a cartoon. The disconnect comes from the adult subject matter, again with Mitchell it’s broadly a song about his life being rescued from the wrong track by the love of a good woman.
I wish it was more enjoyable, Mitchell has a voice with a lot of texture. I’m sure they weren’t but these vocals do seem a bit rushed. It comes across as a lazy effort.
And again, as with ‘feet up’ we have an obvious second meaning. Not sexual this time, instead, constantly referring to a girl with black eyes leads us to thoughts of domestic violence. Now, this was absolutely not the intent of the song but it’s not really a thought I want put repeatedly into my head when listening to a song like this.
It hasn’t dated well but it’s also hard to see that it would have been exciting to hear at the time.
Music for the kids can’t come soon enough.
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