(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)
The Troggs - "Wild Thing"
Hit Number 1: July 30, 1966
Stay at Number 1: 2 Weeks
Punk rock got started a lot earlier than you might think. That genre of rock rose to prominence in the early 1970s, but it first got legs in the late 1960s. A lot of that has to do with the song "Wild Thing", which combines elements of the garage rock we've already seen a few times in this blog, and the new "punk" sound which probably sounded real fresh to the music-listening public in 1966. Though the Troggs were the ones to make the song famous, it was first written by songwriter Chip Taylor for a group called the Wild Ones. However, the Wild Ones' version ended up being a chart flop, never even making a debut on the Hot 100. It took a version by the English rock band, the Troggs, to get the song on the map.
When Taylor composed the song, it took him only a couple minutes to write the whole thing. He had a chorus, and came up with a "sexual-kind-of-feeling song" to put it in his own words. That's pretty accurate when talking about "Wild Thing". The song is a piece of seducing proto-punk rock, and one which is shameless, but so easy to embrace. The best example of that is in the movie "Major League" (an amazing baseball movie for my fellow baseball fans who have never seen it) when a character Ricky Vaughn, played by Charlie Sheen, who is known as the "Wild Thing" comes in to pitch from the bullpen. The whole stadium erupts in singing "Wild Thing", and that scene is not only the best in the movie, but one of the best movie scenes I might have ever seen. And part of what makes that scene so great is the fact that "Wild Thing" is an awesome song to get hyped up with.
It wastes no time getting started, with a screeching siren of a guitar note, and launching into that all-too-familiar strumming pattern that makes the song so great. Lead singer Reg Presley sounds like a man who can't contain his excitement over his "wild thing", getting to a point where she moves him, and makes everything "groovy". I'll be honest, "Wild Thing" isn't a masterpiece of a song, and isn't something where you look at the structure and think "Wow, that's an incredible song". It's blatantly simple. The lyrics are something you might here in any love song, and even the guitar strumming pattern is one that many amateur guitar players learn from the start. But it's that shameless attire, the "But I want to know for sure!" line, the proto-punk hailstorm, and the simple, easy-to-remember lyrics that makes "Wild Thing" into a fun sing-a-long, and drives it into immortal status. The best songs don't ALWAYS have to be complex and deep in meaning. "Wild Thing" is a great example of that.
GRADE: 10/10
JUST MISSED:
Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs' decent but relatively limp "Lil' Red Riding Hood" peaked at #2 behind "Wild Thing". It's a 5.
MY INSPIRATION / MORE INFORMATION:
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