(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 refer down below)
Donovan - "Sunshine Superman"
Hit Number 1: September 3, 1966
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
With immense fame, comes unintentional impersonations. In the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan became one of music's biggest stars, and would go on to be an inspiration to many. Though Dylan never hit #1, there would be flashes of his inspiration on others that would pop up at #1, and we've already seen an example of this with "Mr. Tambourine Man". However, that song was a cover of one of Dylan's own, and not a completely different song with pieces of Dylan's persona in them. In the case of Donovan's "Sunshine Superman", he sounds just like Dylan, plays the guitar just like Dylan, and even sings crazy nonsensical lyrics like you would find in Dylan's recordings. But "Sunshine Superman' was written by Donovan himself, and produced by Mickie Most. Bob Dylan had no hand in the making of "Sunshine Superman". It just happens to sound like him.
There is one difference between "Sunshine Superman" and Bob Dylan's music. While Dylan is mostly known for folk music, "Sunshine Superman" took Dylan's folk style, and twisted it around a little bit. Songs like this would become known as "psychedelic music", and "Sunshine Superman" could very well be the first #1 hit of psychedelia. That genre would become huge in the latter 1960s, and is now sometimes known as "hippie music", since it was very popular with the hippies at that time. Psychedelia would often use organs, and other instruments to make weird, yet cool sounds, and it worked because psychedelic music is SUPPOSED to be weird. There isn't any of that in "Sunshine Superman", and it mostly relies on gibberish lyrics and the sunny feel to it that psychedelic music was all about.
Donovan had grown up in Scotland, and was exposed to many of the folk music that was originating in the U.K. Then after arriving in America, had seen the tail end of the British Invasion, and the rise of America's own folk music. Artists like Bob Dylan, the Byrds, and Simon & Garfunkel were the biggest American folk stars, and their music often talked about protesting the Vietnam War, or had lyrics that were hard to decipher any meaning from at all. Donovan probably took all of this into account and came up with "Sunshine Superman". If you take a look at the lyrics, you'd probably see where I'm coming from with that. The biggest head-scratcher line is "I can make like a turtle and dive for your pearls in the sea", but also features the likes of "You can just sit there thinking on your velvet throne about all the rainbows you can have for your own". This song makes no sense at all. But hey, that's psychedelic music for you.
If you try to get any meaning from "Sunshine Superman" or try to figure out what it's about, you'll fail every time. I get the feeling here that Donovan didn't have anything specific in mind when he was writing the song, and mostly wanted to create a catchy, sunny psychedelic song that was easy to sing a long to. If that was his goal, he achieved it greatly. "Sunshine Superman" is nothing but laughable gibberish, but it's gloriously embraceable gibberish. I like the bass intro in the song, and how it steadily builds up into the involuntary LSD trip that would become psychedelic music. Donovan, though probably unintentionally, sounds a lot like Bob Dylan, and his nasal voice singing these insane words is even somewhat charming in a way. It's the kind of thing I can make fun of, but Donovan would probably make fun of it with me. And that's what's great about "Sunshine Superman". That's why psychedelic music would take off. It was NEW, and it was DIFFERENT. Well that, and the fact that everyone was stoned in the later years in the 1960s.
As for Donovan, he wouldn't hit #1 again, but he continued to pump out hits in the rest of the 1960s, including the laid back, still nonsensical jam "Mellow Yellow", which made it to #2. (It's a 7) He would make friends with Joan Baez, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, who would venture into the psychedelic genre themselves. He apparently taught John Lennon a finger-picking guitar style that Lennon would use in a few Beatles songs. Nowadays, he lives in Ireland with his family, still playing the occasional live show, and has been married since 1970. Life seems to have been pretty good to him.
GRADE: 8/10
SONGS REFERENCED:
The Byrds - "Mr. Tambourine Man"
Donovan - "Mellow Yellow"
MY INSPIRATION / MORE INFORMATION:
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