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The Morning After” is a song written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn for the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, winning Best Original Song at the 45th Academy Awards. Following this success, Maureen McGovern recorded a single version that became a No. 1 hit in the US for two weeks during August 1973, with Gold record sales. Billboard ranked it as the No. 28 song for 1973.
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“Ben” (often referred to as “Ben’s Song”) is a song written by Don Black and Walter Scharf for the 1972 film of the same name (a spin-off to the 1971 killer rat film Willard). It was performed by Lee Montgomery in the film and by Michael Jackson over the closing credits. Jackson’s single, recorded for the Motown label in 1972, spent one week at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, making it Jackson’s first number one single in the US as a solo artist. Billboard ranked it as the number 20 song for 1972. It also reached number 1 on the ARIA Charts, spending eight weeks at the top spot. The song also later reached a peak of number 7 on the UK Singles Chart. In 2004, the song appeared in The Ultimate Collection.
“Ben” won a Golden Globe for Best Song. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1973, losing to “The Morning After” by Maureen McGovern from The Poseidon Adventure.
“Ben” was written for Donny Osmond, but he was on tour at the time and unavailable for recording, so Black and Scharf offered the song to Jackson instead. In addition to its one week at number 1 in the US, the song later reached a peak of number 7 on the British pop chart. “Ben” won a Golden Globe for Best Song. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1973; Jackson performed the song in front of a live audience at the ceremony. Billboard called it a “beauty”.
Although Jackson had already become the youngest artist to ever record a number 1 (“I Want You Back” with The Jackson 5, in 1970), “Ben” made him the third-youngest solo artist, at 14, to score a number 1 hit single. Only Stevie Wonder, who was 13 when “Fingertips” went to number 1, and Osmond, who was months shy of his 14th birthday when “Go Away Little Girl” hit number 1 in 1971, were younger.
The song is one of Jackson’s most re-released, having appeared on The Jackson 5 Anthology, The Best of Michael Jackson, 18 Greatest Hits, Michael Jackson Anthology, Jackson 5: The Ultimate Collection, The Essential Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection, Hello World: The Motown Solo Collection, The Definitive Collection, The Jacksons Story, the North American version of Number Ones (even though here it is the 1981 live version), some versions of King of Pop and Icon.
Live recorded versions were released on the 1981 album The Jacksons Live! and Live at the Forum, and remixed versions have appeared on The Remix Suite, The Stripped Mixes and some versions of Immortal. After Jackson’s death, singer Akon released a remix of the song with his own background vocals and Jackson’s original vocal solo.
Osmond did record it later in his career, including it in his 2014 album The Soundtrack of My Life.
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“Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” is a song by the Canadian band the Poppy Family. First released as a single in 1969, it features on the album of the same name (1969) and was a chart-topping hit in Canada and Ireland. It was also a significant hit in other parts of the world, reaching number two on both the US Cash Box and Billboard pop charts.
The song was written by Terry Jacks and the lead vocal is performed by his wife Susan Jacks. The singer asks her husband Billy where he’s going, knowing that he is leaving her. She pledges she’ll still love him and stay his wife.
The single’s B-side is a cover of Jody Reynolds‘ 1958 hit “Endless Sleep” and is sung by Terry Jacks.
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Bridge Over Troubled Water is the fifth and final studio album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. The album was released on January 26, 1970, through Columbia Records. Following the duo’s soundtrack for The Graduate, Art Garfunkel took an acting role in the film Catch-22, while Paul Simon worked on the songs, writing all tracks except Felice and Boudleaux Bryant‘s “Bye Bye Love” (previously a hit for the Everly Brothers).
Simon & Garfunkel were already successful in the music industry. Their Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, the soundtrack album for Mike Nichols‘ film The Graduate and Bookends peaked at number four, one, and one in the US Billboard 200, respectively, with the former selling 3 million copies and the latter two selling 2 million copies each in the United States. Art Garfunkel took the role of Captain Nately in another Nichols film, Catch-22, based on the novel of the same name. Initially Paul Simon was to play the character of Dunbar, but screenwriter Buck Henry felt the film was already crowded with characters and subsequently wrote Simon’s part out. The unexpectedly long film production endangered the relationship between the duo; Garfunkel later stated in a 1990 interview with Paul Zollo in SongTalk magazine: “Our way of working was for Paul to write while we recorded. So we’d be in the studio for the better part of two months working on the three or four songs that Paul had written, recording them, and when they were done, we’d knock off for a couple of months while Paul was working on the next group of three or four songs. Then we’d book time and be in the studio again for three or four months, recording those . . . . Rather than wait for Paul to write the next bunch of songs, I went off and did this movie.“
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“A Whiter Shade of Pale” is a song by the English rock band Procol Harum that was issued as their debut single on 12 May 1967. The single reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 8 June and stayed there for six weeks. Without much promotion, it reached number 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100. One of the anthems of the 1967 Summer of Love, it is one of the most commercially successful singles in history, having sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In the years since, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” has become an enduring classic, with more than 1,000 known cover versions by other artists.
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Jackson said that “Billie Jean” was based on groupies he and his brothers encountered while they performed as the Jackson 5. “They would hang around backstage doors, and any band that would come to town they would have a relationship with, and I think I wrote this out of experience with my brothers when I was little. There were a lot of Billie Jeans out there. Every girl claimed that their son was related to one of my brothers.”
According to Jackson’s biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, “Billie Jean” was inspired by letters Jackson received in 1981 from a woman claiming he was the father of one of her twins. Jackson, who regularly received letters of this kind, had never met the woman and ignored those claims. However, she continued to send letters stating that she loved him and wanted to be with him, asking how he could ignore “his own flesh and blood”. The letters disturbed him so much that he began to suffer nightmares.
Eventually, Jackson received a parcel containing a photograph of the fan, a gun, and a letter instructing him to die at a particular time. The fan would do the same once she had killed “their” baby, so they could be together in the “next life”. The Jacksons later discovered that the fan had been sent to a psychiatric hospital.
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The Age of Aquarius is the fourth album by the American pop group the 5th Dimension, released in 1969. It was the group’s biggest commercial success in the United States, peaking at number two on the Billboard pop albums chart and the R&B albums chart.
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As one of the most famous protest songs of the Vietnam War era, “Fortunate Son” revives this timeless message with the snarl and swagger of the 1960s righteous rock and roll.
Julie Nixon was hanging around with David Eisenhower, and you just had the feeling that none of these people were going to be involved with the war. In 1968, the majority of the country thought morale was great among the troops, and eighty percent of them were in favor of the war. But to some of us who were watching closely, we just knew we were headed for trouble.
As explained by John Fogerty, this song is the birthchild in a time of extreme distrust for executive authority. John describes the callousness of then president Richard Nixon and his arrogance towards young people. I have included this short video through which John Fogerty summarizes the reasons for this song’s creation.
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“Away in a Manger” is a beloved Christmas carol with a mysterious American origin, falsely attributed for years to Martin Luther, but research shows it emerged in the U.S. in the mid-1800s, possibly by a German Lutheran in Pennsylvania, with its first two stanzas appearing in American songbooks before gaining popularity, and a third stanza added later by Charles H. Gabriel. Its two most common tunes were composed by James Ramsey Murray (1887) and William J. Kirkpatrick (1895).
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“Sister Susie sitting on a thistle.” 😂