hit singles

A lot depends on the luck that comes your way

Posted on by brucehhackett

Many people disagree about how important a part luck plays in determining the path our lives take.

Some believers think it’s all preordained. Others are convinced that our ambitions and actions are instrumental in causing our lives’ events to go a certain way. We may never know the answer until after we’ve passed on (and maybe not then either).

Regardless, songwriters have found the subject of luck — good and bad — to be a meaty subject for lyrics. Indeed, whether a song becomes popular is contingent on many factors — quality, connections, promotion, good timing, personnel — and luck is certainly on that list.

I’ve found many dozens of songs from the past 60-70 years that focus on luck, or the lack of it, and have selected 15 from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s to discuss here. As always, there’s a Spotify playlist at the end that also includes another 15 “honorable mentions” that weren’t, um, lucky enough to make the cut.

Take a chance on these tunes!

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“With a Little Luck,” Paul McCartney and Wings, 1978

McCartney’s catalog, and the man himself, have never been short on sunny optimism, but that has sometimes led to lightweight material that drags down the truly wonderful songs he has written. Case in point: his 1978 LP with Wings, “London Town,” is one of his weaker efforts, littered with disposable, half-finished ditties that don’t measure up. True, he was in the midst of another shakeup in the Wings lineup, but the last time that happened, the result was the exemplary “Band On the Run” LP. This time, only the album’s single, “With a Little Luck,” is even remotely worthy, a smooth, lightly synthesized melody with lyrics that examine life’s mystery and how luck can certainly help matters: “With a little luck, we can help it out,/We can make this whole damn thing work out…”

“Good Luck Charm,” Elvis Presley, 1962

Between 1956 and 1962, Presley topped the US pop charts an incredible 16 times with hit singles (and barely missed the #1 spot another nine times). The last of these came in April 1962 with his recording of “Good Luck Charm,” one of 17 written for Presley by veteran songwriter Aaron Schroeder (including “Stuck on You” and “It’s Now or Never”). Schroeder said about Presley, “Elvis wanted everything to be right, almost to the point of having tears in his eyes, because he felt himself to be struggling to get the results he wanted. He told me he was fond of the lyrics of ‘Good Luck Charm.'” “Don’t want a four leaf clover, don’t want an old horse shoe, /Want your kiss ’cause I just can’t miss with a good luck charm like you, I want a good luck charm a-hanging on my arm to have, to hold tonight…”

“Lady Luck,” Kenny Loggins, 1977

For the leadoff track to Loggins’s solo debut LP, “Celebrate Me Home,” Loggins teamed up with songwriter Johnny Townsend to write “Lady Luck,” an effervescent tune that equates casino games of chance with gambling on a romantic relationship. Townsend (who teamed with Ed Sanford on the hit single “Smoke From a Distant Fire” the same year) wrote the lyrics as a cautionary tale in which the character whose life was “a golden gamble” was in danger of throwing it all away on a long shot: “Oh, what the devil, it’s fun, his lady luck was his one companion, /And by the silver and gold, his heart had been bought and bound, /But he chanced to fall in new love, he kissed her and he cut the tie, /And kissed his lucky lady goodbye…”

“You Got Lucky,” Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, 1982

“Long After Dark,” the fifth LP by Petty and The Heartbreakers, was the first since the debut of MTV the previous year, and the music video they made for the single “You Got Lucky” was shown in heavy rotation. Petty collaborated with guitarist Mike Campbell to write the track, using a “surf guitar” sound and synthesizers for the first time, and adding new bassist/vocalist Howie Epstein to the group lineup. The lyrics take a somewhat boastful view of romantic luck, with the guy claiming it was the girl who got lucky when he found her: “You better watch what you say, you better watch what you do to me, /Don’t get carried away, girl, /If you can do better than me, go, but remember, /Good love is hard to find, you got lucky, babe, when I found you…”

“Luck Be a Lady,” Frank Sinatra, 1962

An accomplished lyricist from the 1940s named Frank Loesser took a stab at writing both music and lyrics for a featured moment in the 1950 Broadway musical “Guys and Dolls” when gambler Sky Masterson is desperate to win a big bet and needs luck to come through. Actor Robert Alda, who won a Tony award for playing Masterson, was the first to record the classic swing tune “Luck Be a Lady,” later covered by Marlon Brando in the film version, and then it became one of Sinatra’s signature songs in the 1960s, issued on the compilation LP “Sinatra ’65.” He re-recorded it with rocker Chrissie Hyde for his “Duets” album just before his death in the mid-1990s. “Let’s keep this party polite, never get out of my sight, /Stick me with me baby, I’m the fella you came in with, /Luck, be a lady tonight…”

“Lucky Man,” The Verve, 1997

Singer-songwriter Richard Ashcroft was the main guy behind England’s popular 1990s group The Verve, who had three successful LPs, most notably the 1997 #1 album “Urban Hymns” with three Top Ten singles in the UK. One of them, the majestic “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” was their only chart appearance in the US, reaching #12, but outselling it in their home country was the #1 hit “Lucky Man” (no relation to ELP’s song). Ashcroft said the song was “inspired by my relationship with my wife, and that sense of when you’re beyond the sort of peacock dance that you have early on in a relationship, and you’re getting down to the raw nature of yourselves.” “Happiness coming and going, I watch you look at me, /Watch my fever growing, I know just where I am, /Got a love that’ll never die, I’m a lucky man…”

“Good Luck Bad Luck,” Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1994

Following the 1977 plane crash that killed three band members and injured several others, the band dissolved, but a decade later, the survivors regrouped with new musicians to tour and eventually record new albums. “Endangered Species,” released in 1994, featured the late Ronnie Van Zant’s brother Johnny on lead vocals, and original member Ed King returned on guitar. It was King who wrote “Good Luck, Bad Luck” and performed the acoustic arrangement, which was something different for Lynyrd Skynyrd, a band that had more than its share of bad luck but also some good fortune as well: “It’s either good luck (I’m the last to get it) or bad luck (I’m the first), /When it’s good, ain’t nothin’ better, /When it’s bad, ain’t nothin’ worse…”

“Lucky Lucky Me,” Marvin Gaye, 1964

Motown Records was indeed a “hit factory,” where songwriters, producers and backing musicians teamed up with featured artists to record dozens of tracks, which were then reviewed by a “quality control” group and either released or shelved. They made some fine choices that topped the charts, but they also rejected some strong records that never saw the light of day until decades later. One of those was “Lucky Lucky Me,” an infectious Marvin Gaye track from 1964 that inexplicably wasn’t released until a “Best Of” package came out in England in 1994, and has still never been released in the US: “Lady Luck sure smiled on me when she blessed me with your loving charms, /I found my place in the sun, sweet heaven in your lovin’ arms, /I want to stand right up and shout it, /Lucky me, lucky lucky me…”

“Lucky Town,” Bruce Springsteen, 1992

Springsteen took a chance in 1988 when he dissolved The E Street Band and used different backing musicians when he finally released new music four years later when he released not one but two albums simultaneously. The “Human Touch” LP was something of a letdown, but “Lucky Town” was a more vibrant, honest collection of songs that reflected Springsteen’s reality of divorce, new love and fatherhood during that time frame. The title track does a nice job of reflecting the ups and downs of his career and personal life in 1992: “When it comes to luck, you make your own, tonight I got dirt on my hands, but I’m building me a new home, /Baby, down in Lucky Town, /I’m gonna lose these blues I’ve found, down in Lucky Town…”

“Some Guys Have All the Luck,” The Persuaders, 1973

A guy named Jeff Fortgang wrote this tune back in 1972 when it was first recorded by The Persuaders, the New York vocal group that had the big 1970 hit “Thin Line Between Love and Hate.” Their soul version of “Some Guys Have All the Luck” stalled at #39 in 1973, but it’s better than the cover versions that followed. Robert Palmer recorded a very different arrangement of the song in 1982, which reached #16 in the UK but petered out at #59 here. Then in 1984, Rod Stewart recorded a pop version of The Persuaders’ original, and it reached #10 on US charts. In the lyrics, the narrator bemoans how other men seem to have better luck than he does: “How does it feel when the girl next to you says she loves you? It seems so unfair when there’s love everywhere, but there’s none for me, /Some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the pain, /Some guys get all the breaks, some guys do nothing but complain…”

“Waiting For My Lucky Day,” Chris Isaak, 1996

Hailing from the San Joaquin Valley of California, Isaak crafted a pleasing blend of country blues, folk ballads and rockabilly music that won him success on the US pop charts in the late 1980s and 1990s. His sultry single “Wicked Game” reached #6 in 1989, and attracted the attention of filmmakers who not only used his music but cast him in small roles as well. His sixth LP, “The Baja Sessions,” included the tropical-sounding “Waiting For My Lucky Day,” a melancholy tune that nevertheless retained a ray of hope: “Lost everything I had in Texas, a millon dreams went by in Texas, /Sometimes the same life turns against us, but I’m waiting for my lucky day, /I watch the sun go down, I keep hanging on waiting for the wind to change, /I watch the sun go down, And I keep hanging on, waiting for my lucky day…” 

“Lucky Guy,” Todd Rundgren, 1978

The multi-talented Rundgren developed a reputation for being something of a one-man show, writing all his songs, playing all the the instruments and producing every track. By the late ’70s, despite touring regularly, he became known as a studio recluse, which inspired the 1978 album title “Hermit of Mink Hollow” (the street where he lived in upstate New York). “Can We Still Be Friends?” was the hit single from the LP, but there’s a also a nice little deep track called “Lucky Guy” that poignantly captures the self-pity of a man who wishes he had better luck in life: “And when there’s pain, he never minds it, /When it’s lost, he always finds it, /Nobody really knows just why, he just must be a lucky guy, I wish I was that lucky guy…”

“Running Out of Luck,” Mick Jagger, 1985

Jagger’s decision to head off on a solo career in the mid-’80s didn’t sit well with his colleagues in The Rolling Stones, especially Keith Richards, who felt some of the songs Jagger recorded would’ve been better on a Stones album, and he might be right. The first LP he attempted, 1985’s “She’s the Boss,” reached #13 in the US, thanks to the single “Just Another Night,” but follow-up singles fared poorly. Jagger wrote most of the tunes himself, including “Running Out of Luck,” one of the deeper album tracks, which features the great Jeff Beck on lead guitar and jazz fusion star Herbie Hancock on keyboards: “Running out of heat, running out of gas, running out of money way too fast, /Running out of liquor, there’s nothing left to eat, running out of luck, hungry for the meat…”

“Luck of the Draw,” Bonnie Raitt, 1991

Raitt had just won multiple Grammy awards for her 1989 LP “Nick of Time,” including Album of the Year, and she was eager to build on that momentum, writing several new songs and collaborating with other songwriters for her next LP, 1991’s “Luck of the Draw,” which actually outperformed “Nick of Time,” peaking at #2 on US album charts, thanks to its Top Five single “Something to Talk About.” The title song was one of two written by Northern Ireland musician Paul Brady, who claimed to be a big believer in the role that luck and coincidence can play in a person’s life: “These things we do to keep the flame burning and write our fire in the sky, /Another day to see the wheel turning, another avenue to try, /It’s in the luck of the draw, baby, the natural law, /Forget those movies you saw, it’s in the luck of the draw…”

“Lucky Man,” Emerson, Lake & Palmer, 1970

Incredibly, singer/bassist Greg Lake was only 12 when he came up with this song, inspired by the books he read about medieval times. Ten years later, after a brief stint with King Crimson, Lake teamed up with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer to form one of the more commercially successful progressive rock groups of that era. They resurrected Lake’s early tune and turned it into their first single, augmented by Emerson’s early noodlings on the synthesizer. As the lyrics reveal, the “lucky man” in question wasn’t so lucky after all, as he was shot and killed in battle in the final stanza, but he sure appeared fortunate at first: “He had white horses, and ladies by the score, /All dressed in satin and waiting by the door, /Ooooh, what a lucky man he was…”

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Honorable mentions:

“Lucky One,” Michael Penn, 2000; “Lucky,” Donna Summer, 1979; “Hard Luck Woman,” Kiss, 1976; “One of the Lucky Ones,” John Batdorf and Michael McLean, 2014; “Lucky Lips,” Ruth Brown, 1957; “Bad Luck,” Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, 1974; “Lucky Star,” Madonna, 1983; “Lucky Day,” Thompson Twins, 1983; “If I Ever Get Lucky,” Merle Haggard, 2007; “Lucky in Love,” Mick Jagger, 1985; “Third Time Lucky,” Foghat, 1979; “Lucky Man,” Ronnie Wood, 2010; “I Feel Lucky,” Mary Chapin-Carpenter, 1992; “Lucky Kid,” Sheryl Crow, 2002; “Twice If You’re Lucky,” Crowded House, 2010; “Lucky Day,” Tom Waits, 1993.

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All under one roof

Posted on by brucehhackett

The generally accepted narrative of rock and roll’s first decade goes something like this:

1955-1958:  Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and others successfully merged blues, country, gospel and swing into an exciting new hybrid dubbed rock and roll, which was embraced by teenagers coast to coast and sold millions of records in that period.  But plane crashes, arrests, military service and a conservative backlash combined to stymie careers and quash the momentum of rock and roll’s early successes.

1964-1969:  The arrival of The Beatles and other British bands heralded a resurgence of vibrant rock music, which grew exponentially through the rest of the ’60s, with such sub-genres as garage rock, psychedelic rock, blues rock and country rock each enjoying growth and popularity.

The era between those two periods is typically disparaged as a forgettable wilderness during which rock had become tame and whitewashed, dominated by non-threatening teen idols and “girl groups.”  

While there is truth in these generalizations, the early ’60s period certainly had its stellar moments, thanks in large part to the songwriting teams employed in New York City publishing companies who churned out many dozens of classic tunes that dominated the airwaves of that relatively innocent era when lyrics focused on idealized romance and adolescent anxieties.

One such publishing Mecca was known as the Brill Building, a Midtown Manhattan structure that housed dozens of music publishers, all competing to come up with the next big hit for the nation’s pop music charts.  Although songwriters worked in a number of different buildings in the city, it was the 11-story office tower at 1619 Broadway near 49th Street that became known as the epicenter of the music industry for many years, serving as a magnet for the most prolific and successful pop music composers of that period.

If you were a musician at the Brill Building in, say, 1962, you could pick out a brilliant new pop song, have it arranged, cut a demo, and make a deal with radio promoters — all under this one famous roof. The 11-story, Art Deco Brill Building — 1619 Broadway, at 49th St. — became known as a one-stop shop for recording artists, but above all as an almost mythical place for songwriting.

Here, hundreds of high-quality hits were cranked out in an almost assembly-line fashion for girl groups, R&B luminaries, teen idols and more. Together, Brill Building songwriters conjured up a soundtrack for the “Mad Men” era — a playlist that in many cases would prove timeless. Granted, these writers turned out their share of teen-oriented drivel, but at their best, they married the excitement and urgency of rhythm-and-blues music to the brightness of mainstream pop.

The roster of songwriting talent under contract there was fairly astonishing:  Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Neil Sedaka, Howard Greenfield, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, Neil Diamond, Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus.  Readers surely recognize names like Carole King, Neil Sedaka, Burt Bacharach and Neil Diamond because they went on to become accomplished performing artists in their own right, but the others worked in relative anonymity even as they composed some of the most popular songs in American music history.

Let’s consider Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, one of three Brill Building songwriting teams comprised of married partners.  In the tradition of the earlier Tin Pan Alley period of the ’30s and ’40s and early ’50s, these teams would split duties, with one composing the music while the other came up with the lyrics.  Together, Barry and Greenwich pooled their talents, and the result was an impressive list of chart successes recorded by various artists of that time:  “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals;  “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You” by The Ronettes;  “Chapel of Love” and “People Say” by The Dixie Cups;  “Maybe I Know” by Lesley Gore;  “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las;  “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” by Manfred Mann;  “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James and The Shondells;  and “River Deep – Mountain High” by Ike and Tina Turner.

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, another prolific married couple who worked in the Brill Building for a few years, generated many hit singles in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, none more famous than The Righteous Brothers’ two monumental #1 hits, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration.”  The songwriting duo also penned “On Broadway,” a smash for The Drifters and, later, George Benson; “Kicks” and “Hungry,” both Top Ten hits for Paul Revere and The Raiders;  “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by The Animals; “Uptown” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” by The Crystals; “My Dad” by Paul Petersen; “I Just Can’t Help Believing” and “Rock and Roll Lullaby” by B.J. Thomas.  In the late 1980s, two of their songs — “Somewhere Out There” by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram, and “Don’t Know Much” by Ronstadt and Aaron Neville — won major Grammy awards.

Weil died in June of this year at age 82.

The Gerry Goffin-Carole King song catalog is probably the most well known of the Brill Building successes, thanks to the recent popularity of the stage show “Beautiful” about Carole King’s life.  Together, they wrote these Top Ten hits:  “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles; “Take Good Care of My Baby” by Bobby Vee;  “The Locomotion” by Little Eva;  “Up on the Roof” and “Some Kind of Wonderful” by The Drifters;  “Go Away Little Girl” by Steve Lawrence;  “One Fine Day” by The Chiffons;  “Chains” and “Don’t Say Nothing Bad About My Baby” by The Cookies;  “I’m Into Something Good” by Herman’s Hermits;  “Don’t Bring Me Down” by The Animals;  “Pleasant Valley Sunday” by The Monkees and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” by Aretha Franklin.     

I’ve written recently about the many hits by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, in the wake of Bacharach’s death earlier this year:  “What the World Needs Now is Love,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “I Say a Littler Prayer,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” “Walk On By,” “One Less Bell to Answer,” “This Guy’s in Love With You.”  

Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus found Top Ten success as a team beginning in 1958 with “A Teenager in Love” by Dion and The Belmonts, followed by “This Magic Moment,” “I Count the Tears,” “Sweets for My Sweet” and “Save the Last Dance for Me” by The Drifters;  “Surrender,” “Little Sister” and “His Latest Flame” by Elvis Presley; and “Can’t Get Used to Losing You” by Andy Williams.

Neil Diamond, of course, wrote “I’m a Believer” and “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” for The Monkees, plus dozens more that he recorded himself (“Cherry Cherry,” “Shiloh,” “Kentucky Woman,” “Holly Holy,” “Solitary Man,” “Thank the Lord for the Night Time”). 

Neil Sedaka, too, composed many songs (sometimes with Howard Greenfield) while working as a Brill Building professional songwriter, but he recorded all of them himself simultaneously during that early ’60s period (“Oh Carol,” “Calendar Girl,” “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”).

The whole environment was creatively charged, said King in 1978. Some of the music publishers, notably impresario Don Kirshner, would pit one songwriter against another to have them compete for whose song would be selected by the performing artist he had in mind. “It was a pressure cooker,” said King, “but kind of in the same way that pressure cookers can produce fabulous meals, the system often pushed us to do our best work.”

I recommend you check out Ken Emerson’s 2006 book “Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era,” which goes into great detail about the amazing Brill Building songwriters and the songs they created. Admittedly, some of the tunes listed above haven’t aged well.  Indeed, some were even kind of cringeworthy at the time (“My Dad” by Paul Petersen?), but most are worthwhile entries in any rock music history lesson, and have been revisited and covered by other artists in subsequent decades.

So, a tip of the hat to the Brill Building, still around today, for providing the environment where these songwriting teams could work their magic in a 9-to-5 setting!

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