The Foundations: "Build Me Up Buttercup"

February 24, 1969 (1 week)

You may not know this but "Build Me Up Buttercup" has a connection to The Wonder Years. "Big deal!" you may be saying to yourself — or, indeed, out loud if you're anything like me — "half the songs from the sixties were used in that show". True but this is not the connection I was looking for. As a matter of fact, The Foundations' second major hit doesn't seem to have been included in an episode of the narrated, nostalgia-fueled sitcom. (And, yes, I looked it up) No, the link I am referring to is that one of its co-writers is one Mike D'Abo, father of British actress Olivia D'Abo, who played main character Kevin Arnold's free-spirited older sister Karen.

Even still, it is a little strange that "Build Me Up Buttercup" never appeared in The Wonder Years. It's easy to imagine Kevin and longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend Winnie Cooper having some of their awkward encounters soundtracked by this classic. Or the geeky Paul Pfeiffer being in a relationship with a girl who is way out of his league, knows it and is treating him accordingly. Or just as a way for a key actor on the show to get some more royalties for her dad.

The Foundations had already topped the RPM chart a year earlier with "Baby, Now That I've Found You", a Motown derived pop smash. Not wishing to be as formulaic as the record label they had aped, "Buttercup" is distinctly poppier, edging ever so close to bubblegum. But this is more than a simple departure, they scarcely sound like the same group. No doubt this is aided by The Foundations having replaced original lead singer Clem Curtis with Colin Young but the biggest factor is with their intentional or unintentional influence of the likes of Jay and the Americans, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Paul Revere and the Raiders and even — yikes — 1910 Fruitgum Company. If their breakthrough smash represented this multiracial group's black contingent, their second major hit sounds about as white as can be.

Still, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Bubblegum pop isn't for me but there were clearly many who were fond of it back in the late sixties. It's a little more surprising given that the British weren't nearly as receptive to bubblegum as North Americans (and, in particular, Canadians) were but in a way that makes me a little more open to this. I had always assumed The Foundations to be an American group and, if anything, this was made even clearer with "Buttercup" than it had been on "Now That I've Found You". With so many UK groups of the era trying to out-English each other, it's kind of refreshing to see some good old fashioned Brits trying to sound like Americans in their pop — which, I guess, gives it another loose association with Wonder Years star Olivia D'Abo, the English actress who we all figured to have been as American as the character she played.

A score of 6 is basically 'high mediocre' and I think this describes "Build Me Up Buttercup" perfectly. This is not a song you need in your life and if it had never existed we'd never feel any reason to invent it. And yet, it's far too enjoyable to be dispensed with entirely. Joyous songs with a dark heart are pop's bread and butter and while it's hardly ABBA's "Knowing You, Knowing Me", there are worse ways to spend three minutes of your life — and I can even tolerate the subsequent five hours it takes to get the damn thing out of my head.

Score: 6

The Foundations: "Baby, Now That I've Found You"

February 10, 1968 (1 week)

I have a bit of a bug up my ass over bands who are generally described as 'Beatle-esque' or 'Beatley'. Actually, it isn't so much the bands themselves — even though they're almost always incredibly boring — as it's the critics and fans who throw these terms around. No, the likes of Big Star, The Raspberries, Cheap Trick, Teenage Fanclub and, yes, Oasis aren't 'Beatle-esque', unless you're convinced that the Fab Four recorded "Day Tripper" and then decided that they were good with that sort of sound and would just do it forevermore. To be truly 'Beatley' is to be musically curious and not have a distinctive style. (Yes, Blur were far more similar to The Beatles than Oasis ever were)

I'm less judgemental when it comes to Motown. A label and quasi-genre, Berry Gordy's famed Detroit-based studio, nicknamed Hitsville USA, attempted to be formulaic but ran into various roadblocks along the way. Many of their most talented signings — Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder — proved also to be some of their most successful, each one was unique and they all proved to be unwilling or unable to be boxed in by the concerns of big business. The in-house songwriting, provided mainly by either Robinson himself or the team of Holland, Dozier and Holland (with both Gaye and Wonder composing their own work before long), was similarly far too accomplished to stick to a particular sound and style. It was only with their peerless studio band the Funk Brothers that there seemed to be an attempt to follow the formula. Motown acts were never a hundred percent 'Motowny', they just tended to have a common through line.

Britain's multiracial septet The Foundations arrived in the late sixties and quickly drew comparisons to Motown acts. But which ones? All of them? None? Bits of some? Who the hell knows. It was as if by not sounding like any of the major acts, they managed to sound more Motown than any of them. If being 'Beatle-esque' requires a group to be as stylistically all-over-the-place as possible, being 'Motowny' means being far more narrow than anyone who was actually signed to them.

Still, The Foundations couldn't quite get all the elements in place. "Baby, Now That I've Found You" opens with a rousing instrumental intro but one that neglects that familiar drum roll that commences so many Tamla classics. Yet, the tune itself is as snappy as anything the Hollands and Dozier ever wrote. Not unlike, say, "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)", "My Girl" and "Stop! In the Name of Love", this is a song that might as well have existed forever. Even if you've never heard it before, it still sounds familiar. How much more Motown can you get?

The one other big thing separating it from those immortal soul-pop hits is professionalism. Not that The Foundations were cheap or amateurish, just that they sound like they were recording on a much tighter budget, in less state-of-the-art facilities and by performers who weren't exactly world class. Vocalist Clem Curtis does his best but he's hardly Marvelous Marvin or Levi Stubbs. The band isn't quite as tight either. It's effectively D.I.Y. Motown, a quintessentially British bastardization of an American institution (hardly the first or last time that's taken place in the UK).

Like later examples from British punk, ska, soul and house music, "Baby, Now That I Found You" ought to be dreadful but for the fact that it's pretty great. Motown — whether at its most formulaic or not — was never short on pop hooks to play around with and this Anglo facsimile is no different. As Tom Ewing implies in his review (in addition to Canada, the single went to number one in the UK in the autumn of 1967; it fell short just of the Top 10 on the Hot 100), The Foundations were wise to go all out with stomping on this recording, since this was around the time it was being phased out of Motown. Fans who missed the Hitsville USA of old still had something reasonably similar to embrace — and, indeed, to dance to. The backbone of eighties' UK pop was a near-universal love for old Motown records but the results were frequently too over-produced and slick to be really convincing. They would've done better to have followed The Foundations in the direction of a raw Motown sound.

Score: 8