(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)
Bachman-Turner Overdrive - "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"
Hit Number 1: November 9, 1974
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
In 1970, the Canadian band, the Guess Who, got to #1 with a garage-rock banger, "American Woman". The Guess Who were, in my opinion, an underrated band, and they should've had more hits than they did. Part of the reason why they never did much after "American Woman" was because of some tension growing among the group members, mainly between Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman. Cummings was the band's lead singer, and Bachman was their lead guitar player, but Bachman shifted his religion to become a Mormon, which Cummings had a problem with. Eventually Bachman couldn't take the tension with Cummings any longer and he left the Guess Who to form his own band. It's not known if this was directly coming from Cummings, but Bachman had been called a "loser," and someone "nobody wanted to work with" after leaving the Guess Who, but he made it work. He formed Bachman-Turner Overdrive, or maybe better known as just B.T.O.
B.T.O. was formed along with Bachman's youngest brother, Robbie, who played drums along with their brother Gary as their acting manager. B.T.O. started out as a minor band called Brave Belt, and at the suggestion of Neil Young, the band added Fred Turner to play bass during their live shows. Brave Belt eventually added Blair Thornton as a second guitarist, and soon after that Bachman and Turner, who contributed the most to the band's work, renamed the band to Bachman-Turner Overdrive. In 1973, B.T.O. released their album Bachman-Turner Overdrive II, which included the song "Takin' Care of Business", the band's first huge hit. (It made it to #12 in 1974. It's a 9) Since they now had their first big smash hit, they had to have a nice follow up song, but that song was something that the band, at first at least, didn't plan on releasing.
The band were signed with Mercury Records, and worked with a producer named Charlie Fach. They had their next album, Not Fragile, ready to go, but Fach wasn't impressed with anything scheduled to be released. They had eight songs on the album, but Fach thought they lacked the "magic" that would make any of them hits. But Bachman had one song that he thought about, and he reluctantly told Fach about it. He told him he had this other song, but that it was basically a joke song. He sang it, but not seriously, and he stuttered in the song as a joke with his younger brother, the aforementioned Gary who had a stutter. He said "We have this one song, but it's a joke. I'm laughing at the end. I sang it on the first take. It's sharp, it's flat, I'm stuttering to do this thing for my brother." They played the song for him, and Fach reportedly smiled and said that song "had the magic. It floated above the rest." That song was "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet".
Listening to the song, it's pretty easy to tell that the whole thing is some big joke. Bachman sings with the stutter, of course, and the things he's singing about are just silly. He met a devil woman who took his heart away, but she keeps telling he "ain't seen nothing yet." The song doesn't even make much sense. You can tell why Bachman wasn't so sure about releasing it as a single. But, you can also tell why Fach was so high on the song. There's a sort of sweet spot with songs sometimes. They don't need to be so silly that they could be called "novelty," but they can be so naïve in nature that they're still equally as fun. "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" presents us some guy with a stutter who meets some woman who promises love to him and stays true to the promise, and the guy doesn't seem to know how to react to it all, but he loves it. Why wouldn't B.T.O. release the song? Give it a shot and see what happens? Sure enough, people in 1974 loved the song's absurdly awesome content and they helped bring it to #1.
Not to mention, the song flat out slaps. Bachman's lead guitar raises the song to some God-like levels. Those riffs are nasty. The younger Bachman, Robbie, gives the song a raging heartbeat on drums, which could go along well with what the narrator is telling us, and what his heartbeat is likely doing. And that stutter. My lord is that stutter fun. Bachman didn't even want the stutter in it at first, and he re-recorded the song with a normal lead vocal without it. Of course, he liked that even less. He said he sounded like Frank Sinatra, which there is no way Randy Bachman could ever sound like Sinatra, but it's still a great quote regardless. He kept the stutter. The rest is history. You can't imagine the song without it. "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" is nothing more than a fun, downright goofy song that no one should take seriously. But it's one of the best of that kind to ever exist.
B.T.O. won't be in this series again, but they have two monster hits that will only get better the older they get. That's better than what Burton Cummings ended up doing. That's also better than having 10 #1 hits that suck.
GRADE: 9/10
JUST MISSED:
Carole King's silky smooth jazz number, "Jazzman", peaked at #2 behind "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet". It's a 7.
IN POP CULTURE:
I'm not even gonna give context for this, cause I think this scene is so much more funny without it. Here's a ridiculous scene in The Drew Carey Show (with Craig Ferguson) that has "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" playing. Enjoy.
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