December 21, 1964 (1 week)
"(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear"
Brackets are often used to add a sense of brevity to lengthy song titles. Still, the part that is free from punctuation ought to be able to exist on its own. With that in mind, has anyone ever referred to Blondie's second UK Top 10 hit simply as "Presence, Dear"? No, no one ever has. Why the hell would they?
"So You Want to Be (A Rock and Roll Star)"
Patti "Only 10,000 people bought the Horses album but everyone who did went on to write cranky record reviews for weekly hipster papers" Smith covered The Byrds' classic but then someone had the bright idea to add a superfluous set of brackets round a very key part of the title. I suspect it was Smith herself who was behind it as a means of downplaying rock stardom, which is an easy thing to do when you've never achieved it yourself.
"The Beat(en) Generation"
Placing a set of brackets within a word must've made The The's Matt Johnson feel like he'd done something clever. Dead clever. He didn't and it's not.
"(Everything I Do) I Do It for You"
It is far from the only thing wrong with Bryan Adams' biggest hit but placing the brackets around the part of the title everyone remembers is a botch. Had he swapped the punctuation around, this smash from Kevin Costner's Robin Hood would have been (slightly) less irritating. though it wouldn't have saved what is a very grim song. (Fourteen year old me would have disrespectfully disagreed but what did that gawky loser know?)
(What's the Story) Morning Glory?
Album titles that utilize parentheses are a rarity — unless you happen to be a Rolling Stones' compilation. Is it any wonder Noel Gallagher penned lines like "slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannon ball" when he couldn't even give his biggest selling long player a decent title. His nibs has been questioned about a great deal over the years but let me add a contribution of my own: first, what purpose do the brackets serve and, second, did you ever notice that the question mark also gets dropped whenever it's simply referred to as 'Morning Glory': what's up with that?
"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)"
The chorus to this magnificent 1975 UK number one goes "come up and see me, make me smile". Quite why the late Steve Harley chose to reverse it is anyone's guess since all he ever said about his signature hit was how it was all about how the first incarnation of the group Cockney Rebel had quit on him. Like many parenthetical songs, the part of the title everyone seems to remember is stuck in punctuational purgatory.
"(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me"
The British didn't bother with the bracketed bit and who could blame them? It would be just fine as either "There's Always..." or simply "Always..." but the parentheses are distracting and serve no earthly purpose. Just look at this particular blog entry: I could have written one of my usual reviews of five or six paragraphs expanding on one of my half-baked pop music notions. Like the fact that Sandie Shaw's trademark was performing barefoot. Or that she ended up getting shafted in the United States at precisely the same time in which less talented men with British accents were being gifted with record contracts and number one hits. Or that she would somehow go on to become this symbol of sixties' cool long before the members of St Etienne began dictating how much we should be in the thrall of the likes of Françoise Hardy and Sérgio Mendes. I've wasted the one Canadian number one of Shaw's career on a what is in effect a magazine sidebar. Oh well, I ought to just (get a) Grip (on myself).
Score: 8
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