The Vogues: "Magic Town"

April 11, 1966 (1 week)

From the beginning of 1964 until the spring of '66, British Invasion acts had completely dominated the Canadian pop charts. In fact, many of them would continue to do so as the decade progressed but it was only now that a true American alternative was beginning to take shape. While The Beach Boys, Four Seasons and Supremes managed to do well in spite of the takeover by The Beatles, none of them operated as though they were in competition with the Fab Four. (Oddly enough, The Beach Boys would begin to respond to the challenge but only as their imperial status had begun to dip, albeit only slightly) But a whole new generation of US acts was beginning to emerge that could deal with the new bar John, Paul, George and Ringo had set, all the while (hopefully) bringing to an end the charlatans that had become big in their slipstream.

For the next nine weeks, American acts would control the of the top of the RPM charts. Not a particularly lengthy streak, no, but it was one that represented a country clawing its way back. The British weren't about to go away - not until the nineties at any rate — but from this point forward there was a greater balance between pop's two great cross-Atlantic forces. — for good or bad. While the incoming batch of US chart toppers is filled with heavyweights, it was down to the more selectively popular Vogues to begin righting the ship

The last time The Vogues came up (it wasn't all that long ago but it sure as hell feels like it's been a while) I gave "Five O'Clock World" a rather begrudging score of 7. Had I taken another day or two with it, there's a good chance it would've scored even lower. I had started off thinking it was a near-perfect sixties' throwback to happy-go-lucky losers only to get utterly sick and tired of it. (With all that in mind, it sure was the perfect theme to The Drew Carey Show) Their follow-up hit "Magic Town" is the opposite: a seemingly stale concoction at first that has managed to grow on me over the past several days. Had I spent more time stewing over it, it's possibly my esteem would have grown; I'm already convinced it is a step up from its better-remembered predecessor.

Like The Beach Boys and Four Seasons — and, indeed, virtually everyone in American pop who came out of that Spector-ish Wall of Sound malarkey — The Vogues seemed to operate in a universe untouched by The Beatles. "Magic Town" sounds like a brooding, slightly haunting fifties' doo-wop number, the kind of sonic experience that would've seemed all too predictable five years' earlier. Yet, among all this British Invasion dross, it sounds surprisingly fresh. No doubt helped along by the songwriting skills of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, "Magic Town" has that 'lost American dream' melancholy that unifies a lot of the finest US pop of the age. Those suburbs populated by ex-servicemen, their brides and their ever-expanding families were meant to be 'magic towns' but now they had become nightmare fuel of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, loveless marriages, TV dinners and ennui. 

Though dutifully sent to number one in Canada, "Magic Town" peaked at a disappointing number twenty-one on the Billboard Hot 100. Though pop kids may have been turned off by its dire prognostication of the burbs, it's also quite possible that they simply didn't get the chance to let its charms stick to them like barnacles on a hull. Or, they chose not to give it a few spins. It just sounded like some of that pathetic old pre-Beatles' stuff that everyone had moved on from. But if Americans doing what they used to be best at wasn't going to convince enough fans, they would have to learn to adapt. Some were already doing so.

Score: 8