Chiffons Side w/ A Pinch of Psych

• Listen to this song on youtube: Nobody Knows What’s Goin’ On
• Listen to these 45s in a Spotify playlist here with other 45s from the blog (though note, spotify doesn’t have all / many of the songs featured on the site so some playlists may be incomplete or feature slightly different versions than the original 45s I’m referring to here.
• Download the songs by clicking the titles above

The Chiffons are the perfect expression of the Brill Building and ‘Girl Group’ era, with numerous hit records, credits from Goffin, King, The Tokens who, realizing their time on the charts was limited with their single “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” formed a publishing and production company and signed The Chiffons.  

They were also a perfect expression of the difficulty artists at the time had making money on their records.  The Chiffons later sued to be released from their contract, despite endless touring a charting records they weren’t seeing any money.  Though they won their release, realizing the difficulty of finding new representation that was any better and being branded as agitators, they were forced to return to The Tokens company Bright Tunes.

The Chiffons, as stated, toured extensively including overseas and were an in demand group.  The strain and lack of return eventually led to members leaving the group or being replaced until the group effectively was done by the mid-70s.  Our first tie in to The Beatles also comes toward the end of The Chiffons career.  George Harrison was successfully sued for “unintentionally plagiarizing” One Sweet Day with his hit My Sweet Lord which he blamed on organist extrordinaire Billy Preston saying they origin of the song had come from them jamming on riff (which is funny because Preston didn’t originally receive a writing credit).  

Today’s record was produced by the evocatively titled Brute Force who wrote songs for a lot of people but was most well known for his song “King of Fuh” produced, again, by The Tokens.  The song was released by The Beatles Apple records but with its risque play on words (“Fuh-King”) was basically dead in the water.  The original B-Side was none other than today’s record, Nobody Knows.  Brute Force’s version dials up the paranoia and psychedelia for a pretty distinctly different end result and it’s interesting to hear how, having his hand in both, they were treated differently.

Worth mentioning Ken Emerson’s book “Always Magic In The Air” here which has lots of great info about this wild and fruitful time period (though not too much on The Chiffons).

Hope you enjoy today’s record and we’ll see you next time!

-George / Snack Attack

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