Neil Sedaka: "Calendar Girl"

January 23, 1961 (3 weeks)

I recently watched the Netflix documentary Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley. I didn't learn a whole lot but there are definitely worse ways to spend an hour-and-a-half. I had been led to believe that manager Colonel Tom Parker had envisioned Presley's comeback show as being a Christmas special with his famous client sitting around a fireplace and singing Christmas carols but this presentation made it out to be more like cheesy skits being engineered to undercut The King's prowess as a rock 'n' roll star. Very little is mentioned as relates to producer Steve Binder, who is generally credited with convincing Elvis to abandon the showbiz glitz and go back to his roots.

Anyway, one of the talking heads was this critic who seemed like a parody of the self-righteous American music fan who demands his heroes be "authentic". The angrier he got, the more it made me want to laugh. If only he had bothered making a few good points as many of his colleagues managed to do. Instead, he offered up tired crap like "people didn't write their own songs before The Beatles". As I have already discussed here, this is totally false. Some artists did double duty as composers, others didn't. What the Fab Four and Bob Dylan did was to make it a rule that one had to be self-sufficient in the songs department.

So it wasn't simply Lennon, McCartney and Dylan — in fact, their paths were far less conventional than many of their contemporaries.  A crucial scene that helped foster a whole generation of singer-songwriters was Brill Building pop which acted as a kind of apprenticeship for talented young musicians. Neil Diamond, Carole King and Neil Sedaka all cut their teeth as staff songwriters, composing material for popular teen idols and girl groups of the day while being barely out of high school. (Randy Newman, Laura Nyro and Lou Reed all got their starts in not dissimilar circumstances, albeit not under the influential umbrella of Brill Building) The record labels wanted fresh, bouncy pop hits for their artists; these individuals delivered and acquired invaluable experience for their own careers along the way.

Different from the likes of late bloomers Diamond and King, Neil Sedaka managed to carve out a pop career of his own while still just a youngster himself. A piano prodigy — his domineering mother always dreamed of him as a concert pianist and only accepted her son as a pop star when the cheques from "Calendar Girl" began rolling in — he also happened to have a cracking All American "gee whiz" singing voice and he even looked the part. The only thing he seemed to lack was a lyrical flair but he had childhood neighbour Howard Greenfield to fill in the words.

Yeah, about that. "Calendar Girl" is a splendid pop hit but I'm not crazy about the lyrics. A low hanging fruit complaint? Maybe. These Brill Building guys worked hard but they weren't exactly busting many brain cells trying to get their rhyme schemes to work. Yet, even with that said, there's some awfully lazy writing going on. So, as the song plays, a chorus lists off each month of the year followed swiftly by Sedaka describing his plans. The first two months start off all right ("You start the year off fine" and "You're my little valentine") before we get to the third when it all goes awry. "I'm gonna march you down the aisle". March: I see what you did there! Very clever if utterly meaningless. Wasn't there anything else Greenfield could've thrown in there? St Patrick's Day? The Ides of March? The start of spring perhaps?

Then, there's some feeble punning. "Maybe if I ask your dad and mom": May/maybe, some real lyrical playfulness going on here. "They'll let me take you to the junior prom": June/junior, I love it. I take it the prom is supposed to be in May or June so good one there. Now, September ought to have been an open goal what with school starting and homecoming which is probably around that time. But no, instead we get "Light the candles for your sweet sixteen" all so they had something to match with October's "Romeo and Juliet for Halloween". ("You're my one and only homecoming queen" sounds much better to me but maybe that's why Sedaka and Greenfield are and were wealthy songwriters and I'm in the "I get paid nothing cos nobody reads this shit" blogging game)

Oh but I complain far too much. "Calendar Girl" is still a rousing pop song with a glorious shuffle, toy piano solo and Sedaka's wide-eyed optimism. Such a good time is being had by all involved that it's impossible not to want to join in. And what a great song to have around for the start of a year! Whether it's a 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates calendar or one from 1977 featuring the cast of Charlie's Angels or one from any given year filled with pictures of tiger cubs, no song better captures getting a new calendar and flipping its pages as we look ahead to a new year. We just got our 2025 UNICEF calendar in the mail: it may not look like a great year to come but we can always hope for the best. Good thing we got Neil Sedaka to help us along the way.

Score: 7