Jackie DeShannon: "Needles and Pins"

July 8, 1963 (2 weeks)

As has already been established on here, The Beatles and Bob Dylan didn't actually invent the concept of recording artists writing their own material. Plenty of individuals did it before them even though it must be said that an awful lot more did it afterwards. Plus, I think there had long been a desire for professional songwriters to record their own stuff as well as groups and singers who aspired to be composers. Not everyone thrived in both realms though. Some like Gerry Goffin and Ernie Maresca tried their hand at being pop stars but it wasn't really for them

Jackie DeShannon is a curious case in this regard because though she did well as both a pop star and a songwriter, she seemed to keep the two separate from one another. The handful of hits she recorded were written by others while she was unable to popularize her own compositions. While contemporaries such as Carole King, Neil Sedaka and James Taylor are described as singer-songwriters, DeShannon might be more accurately termed a 'singer/songwriter', as though the two jobs could in fact be mutually exclusive.

In much of the world "Needles and Pins" was neither written by Jackie DeShannon nor a hit single for her. (Actually, in the whole world it wasn't written by her since Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono wrote it) On the Hot 100 it reached a very modest number eighty-four. She never meant a thing in her day to the British, who would soon take to the song enough when Merseybeat group The Searchers took it to number one at the start of 1964. (Such was the hunger on the North American pop charts for all things British in the first half of that year — don't worry, we'll be getting to it soon enough — that their version managed to make the Top 20 on both sides of the border) It was only in Canada that her version did anything at all of note, going all the way to the top.

The Searchers' rendition has its strengths, not the least of which being that it anticipates Byrdsian jangle-pop, sounding like the blueprint for the Gene Clark-penned "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better". Yet it's DeShannon's original which is the stronger of the two. Her singing on it takes some getting used to, especially if you're used to the purity of her vocals on "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" (as an aside, she didn't write them either). Her delivery is surprisingly rough with more than a little country and western in her pitch. What feels clunky at first slowly begins to make sense. DeShannon displays a certain ferocity behind the tears that you simply don't hear in The Searchers (or, indeed, in the bulk of the covers you're likely to come across). This is a woman who has been spurned: her heart is broken, yes, but she's also out for blood and who can blame her? Contrast this with the way most men typically sing it which just oozes victimhood.

Handing a score out of ten to this one has been tricky. Much as I like it, I don't really need to ever listen to it again. It's very impressive but it's more effective as a statement than as a truly wonderful pop song. Having been unaware until fairly recently that she ever had anything to do with "Needles and Pins", I'm very happy to have encountered it now. But it's over. Had I been twenty or twenty-five or thirty and had been coming off one of my many breakups, I might have a deeper connection to it but perhaps I've simply aged out of such concerns. (Thank bloody god) But, hey, a good song is a good song so let's just leave it at that.

Score: 7