(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)
Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods - "Billy Don't Be a Hero"
Hit Number 1: June 15, 1974
Stay at Number 1: 2 Weeks
In the early '60s, one of the worst things to ever happen to music was teen tragedy music. These were songs where a young couple were living their ordinary lives before something horrible (and heavily exaggerated) happened to one of them, causing them to die. If you listen closely to the plot of these songs, it's apparent that they only exist because they try to tug at the heartstrings, but really they're just some of the corniest, most worthless pieces of music that have ever had the misfortune of existing. (In "Teen Angel", a 1960 #1 hit, a girl rushes back into a car stuck on railroad tracks only to get annihilated by the oncoming train. Her reason? To get a stupid high school ring that belonged to her boyfriend. See, why does that song need to exist?) However, enter "Billy Don't Be a Hero" and you're given a weird situation. It's still pretty similar to those teen tragedy songs, but it's also different. It at least has a story, and a reasonable one at that, that leads to an unfortunate death. We'll get to that in a minute.
There are two popular versions of "Billy Don't Be a Hero", depending on where you are in the world. The first version belonged to Paper Lace, a band that will soon show up in this blog, and their version blew up in England, peaking at #1 on the U.K. Singles Chart. For whatever reason, though, their version stalled hard in America, and it barely had any chart success over here, as it peaked at #96. (I think a song needs to at least peak in the top 40 if I'm gonna go out of my way to give it a grade) Paper Lace also achieved success with the song in Australia, New Zealand and even Ireland, but it just couldn't gain any traction in the west side of the globe. But then an obscure group named Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods covered the song, and it had a whole new life in a whole new part of the world. It's very strange because Paper Lace and Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods' versions are very similar to each other, so why they didn't both have success in the same parts of the world will forever remain a mystery to me.
Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods' version, unlike Paper Lace's, was big in the west side of the world, peaking at #1 in America and Canada, but not reaching charts anywhere else. I don't know what they love in England or Australia, but I'm surprised that America didn't eat Paper Lace's version right up. We loved this sort of crap back in the day. Anything that had to do with the war, and making it seem negative was a cheap and easy way to score yourself a hit here. I can't tell you how many songs I've covered here that had to do with the Vietnam War. Eventually though, "Billy Don't Be a Hero" saw its success here with Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, who were an American band. So I guess it was inevitable that the song would become huge here at some point.
I've come to the conclusion that "Billy Don't Be a Hero" is a cross between early '60s music, as well as late '60s music. It's still way too similar to those garbage-ass teen tragedy songs, but it's also a song against war, which is what a lot of late '60s songs were like. The song is about a young guy named Billy who leaves his fiancé to go fight in the war. The girl hates this, of course, and she cries to him, "Billy don't be a hero. don't be a fool with your life!" Billy is unphased by this, and goes to the army anyway. The last thing Billy's fiancé tells him is "Billy don't be a hero, come back to me!" As anyone can predict, Billy volunteers himself to "ride up and bring back some extra men." He gets killed while doing this, but he's said to have died a hero. When his fiancé gets the letter telling her he had died but that he was a hero and she should be proud, she throws the letter away.
Obviously the story is pretty bad, but there's at least some driving force behind this song that the teen tragedy songs don't have. Even though it's predictable, there's a buildup in the story. You know it's all leading to something. And that something isn't a random death out of left field. Billy decided to join the army, and he got killed in action. He didn't get run over on railroad tracks because of a stupid decision he made.
Still though, there's not much musically that's that great about "Billy Don't Be a Hero". There's a cheesy-as-hell recorder/flute at the beginning, and the sappy, over-the-top delivery by lead vocalist Mike Gibbons doesn't really help. However, I don't consider "Billy Don't Be a Hero" to be that bad of a song. It's a little bit sappy, but the song is one of those okay, generic pieces of '70s pop in my eyes. I get why this is one of the most hated songs of the '70s, specifically because of all the corniness I was talking about above, but that kind of stuff doesn't piss me off. If "Billy Don't Be a Hero" comes on the radio, I wouldn't be excited, but I wouldn't change the channel. It's an insignificant piece of regular '70s music, the kind of thing that you'd expect from the decade. Especially in 1974.
Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods only had one other hit, "Who Do You Think You Are", which peaked at #15 in 1974. (It's a 7) Their stardom died down heavily just a couple years after "Billy Don't Be a Hero", and they never rebounded from that. They started playing the nostalgia circuit in 1996, and it looks like they still do that today. A lot of people hate their only #1 hit, but for me, it's just generic. It could honestly be a lot worse than this, people.
GRADE: 5/10
JUST MISSED:
The Stylistics' soulful, stringy ballad "You Make Me Feel Brand New" peaked at #2 behind "Billy Don't Be a Hero". It's an 8.
IN POP CULTURE:
The Doug Anthony All-stars, a comedic group that's pretty similar to the stuff Weird Al Yankovich did, did a weird little cover making fun of "Billy Don't Be a Hero". Here's that video:
Comentários