Eddie Holman: "Hey There Lonely Girl"

February 21, 1970 (1 weeks)

Like "Venus", "Hey There Lonely Girl" would one day be covered by a British trio under the watchful gaze of the hugely successful eighties' songwriting/production team of Stock Aitken Waterman. There are, however, two major differences between them. The first is that SAW failed to add anything of value onto their remake with their version being more or less a carbon copy. The second is that while Bananarama were masters of having a good time and putting it on their records, Big Fun were an especially poor boy band whose brief presence on the UK charts marked the coming end times for the famed svengalis who provided them with largely undeserved hits.

Big Fun's "Lonely Girl" is appalling. Members Phil Creswick, Mark Gillespie and the late Jason John hadn't fully utilized their vocal chords up until this point as they had been more accustomed to bleating out workmanlike lines on supposedly uplifting pop songs like their cover of The Jacksons' "Blame It on the Boogie" and SAW original "Can't Shake the Feeling". These weren't all that good themselves but at least the boys sound confident. But their grand artistic statement of "Lonely Girl" only exposes them for the pop frauds they always were.

Turns out, "Hey There Lonely Girl" is so bad that it even manages to undermine Eddie Holman's more celebrated hit from 1970. For sure, three English lads doing piss poor falsettos can't compare with a genuine soul singer but let's face it, Holman was hardly Curtis Mayfield, was he? I laugh at Big Fun only to realize that I can't take this one seriously either. Male R&B vocalists could take themselves too seriously at times (something we'll be seeing a lot of when we finally get to the nineties but at least this tendency will be relieved at times their more spirited female counterparts) and I think Holman is guilty in this regard. Plus, there's a fine line between reaching out to a young woman and preying upon her — something that becomes clear when comparing the Brian Wilson-sung version of "I'm Waiting for the Day" on The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the outtake with Mike Love on lead — and this one pleads just a little too much for me to believe that his intentions were completely virtuous.

(Incidentally, my point about over-earnest R&B singers is also on full display on B side "It's All in the Game", which had previously topped the Canadian charts by both Tommy Edwards and Cliff Richard. Though I do prefer Holman's more orthodox vocal to what he did on "Lonely Girl", it is similarly over-serious though, I suppose, adding humour and/or irony to a song such as this would be a nigh on impossible task even to a Steely Dan-Pet Shop Boys supergroup)

Still, I can get through a good chunk of Holman's version without the overwhelming desire to turn it the hell off. That is until just prior to the two minute mark when my bette noire enters the picture. It has been good while since I've had to deal with one of those horribly dated chorus parts. I figured they had been consigned to 1958 when they were already passed their expiry date but some genius involved decided that what "Lonely Girl" needed was an unwelcome bit of white-bred singing that the sixties had been mercifully free of.

If there is a version to go for, it's "Hey There Lonely Boy" (italics  are my own) by Ruby and the Romantics from back in 1963. It isn't spectacular either but at least singer Ruby Nash gets the job done without the need to overdo it. A fine recording that others may have heard and thought "I can improve on this shit!" only for them to go out and fail miserably at doing so. Not everyone can handle a cover version the way Bananarama did with "Venus"; in fact, Eddie Holman and, especially, Big Fun are much more the rule that proves the exception. 

Score: 3