FEATURE:
Groovelines
The Archies – Sugar, Sugar
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THROUGH the course of musical history…
there have not been many cartoon or animated bands. Of course, Gorillaz are pretty well known and popular. They are definite pioneers. Looking further back, there have not been many examples. One can understand why. People do want a human face and, with a cartoon group, there is a lack of authenticity and this sense of them being a novelty. Among the great one-hit wonders, Sugar, Sugar by The Archies is among the very best. Written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, it reached number one in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1969. It there for four weeks. Originally released on the album, Everything's Archie, this album was recorded by a group of studio musicians managed by Don Kirshner. Ron Dante's lead vocals were accompanied by Toni Wine and songwriter Andy Kim. The song’s initial release was met with moderate chart success and acclaim. When the song was re-released in mid-July 1969, it achieved enormous success by the late summer/early autumn. I think it is a very summery and delightful song that scored high in the charts around the world. A massive-selling single that helped end the 1960s with a huge smile – at a time when bands like The Beatles were breaking up and there was uncertainty in the air -, it would be nice to think that there is going to be another song like this in the future. Even though it was released fifty-three years ago, Sugar, Sugar has lost none of its power. I have heard the song so many times, yet it remains so fresh and exciting. I know there are people who can’t stand the song.
I was interested reading Stereogum’s article about The Archies’ Sugar, Sugar. It is a track that is made really interesting because few people know about the group and those who wrote the song:
“Jeff Barry was a pop genius who, in the early ’60s, had co-written “Be My Baby” and “Then He Kissed Me” and “Chapel Of Love” and “Leader Of The Pack.” He co-wrote “Sugar, Sugar” with Andy Kim, a Lebanese-Canadian singer and songwriter who was on the way to a pretty decent run as a solo performer. Ron Dante, who sang the lead Archie part, was a former novelty-song guy who would go on to produce records for Barry Manilow and Pat Benatar. Toni White, who’d co-written “A Groovy Kind Of Love” for the Mindbenders, sang the Veronica part. Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry’s ex-wife who’d co-written most of those classic songs with him, also contributed. These were professional music-biz lifers who didn’t fit with the era’s excesses but who knew their way around a hook.
And “Sugar, Sugar” is a merciless hook machine. It’s a bright and shiny love song, aimed at actual toddlers, that tries to express nothing other than non-threatening warmth. And it hits that mark so hard. There’s an almost mechanical precision to the beat — bass, drums, handclaps, guitar-strums. The half-mocking keyboard riff on the chorus will remain in your head through any calamity that doesn’t kill you. And the song stabs away with its own scientifically calibrated power, building to a weirdly overwhelming crescendo.
Do people still get snobby about “Sugar, Sugar”? Probably not, right? A song like that does what rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to do. It fills you up and gives you weird little dopamine rushes, and then it lingers. Lester Bangs once called “Sugar, Sugar” “a rock & roll classic to which something like the Grateful Dead’s ‘Dark Star’ can’t hold a candle,” and Bangs also goaded Lou Reed into admitting that he wished he’d written it.
Does it matter that the Archies were not actual humans? I think it makes the whole stunt even more audacious. Nothing like “Sugar, Sugar” could happen now; the closest thing in recent memory, unless I’m forgetting something, is the fleeting success of Crazy Frog. If the Archies had been an art stunt, rather than a commerce stunt, we’d be talking about them in hushed tones. But it doesn’t matter what kind of stunt they were, since “Sugar, Sugar” still bangs”.
A song that I feel is much more than a novelty, one cannot listen to Sugar, Sugar without feeling lifted and happier. The sheer infectiousness of the track steers it away from cloying and too sweet territory. There is no doubt that the insatiable and sunny Sugar, Sugar…
A 1960s classic.