I.
I've mentioned before on this blog how the word hello has long held a privileged place in my personal vocabulary: click here.
It's disappointing, therefore, that the majority of songs that have the word hello in their title or lyrics make one wish to stop up one's ears like Odysseus, so as to never hear them again. And this includes some really well-known songs by much loved artists.
For example:
'Hello, Dolly!', by Louis Armstrong (1964) ...
'Hello, Goodbye', by The Beatles (1967) ...
'Hello, I Love You', by The Doors (1968) ...
'Hello', by Lionel Richie (1984) ...
'Hello', by Adele (2015) ...
In fact, the more I come to think about it, there is really only one great song containing the word hello - and that is Gary Glitter's smash hit single 'Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again' [1].
II.
1973 was a golden year for British pop music - particularly for the genre known as glam rock - and whilst I loved Sweet, Slade, and Suzi Quatro, Gary Glitter was my beautiful obsession at this time [2].
'Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again' - written by Glitter and genius record producer Mike Leander - was much loved not only by teeny-boppers, but by football supporters up and down the country. O what fun we had singing along to this ridiculously catchy song!
Of course, that was then and this is now ... And Glitter's songs are today no longer played on the radio or sung on the terraces and his performances on Top of the Pops no longer shown - we all know why ... [3]
Without getting into the whole can we separate art from the artist debate [4], I think that's a shame. And ultimately mistaken. I suppose, push comes to shove, I remain of the Wildean view that there is no such thing as a moral or immoral pop record.
Notes
[1] Gary Glitter, 'Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again', single release from the album Touch Me (Bell Records, 1973): click here to play.
Having said that this is the only great song with hello in the title and/or lyrics, I must obviously also mention Soft Cell's 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye' (Some Bizzare, 1982): click here. And I have to give a nod to 'Public Image' (Virgin, 1978), the debut single by Public Image Ltd., which opens with Rotten repeating the word hello six times: click here.
[2] See the post 'Notes on a Glam-Punk Childhood' (24 July 2018): click here.
[3] Glitter's career ended after he was imprisoned for downloading child pornography in 1999, and was subsequently convicted of child sexual abuse and attempted rape, in 2006 and 2015, respectively. The fact remains, however, that he is one of the UK's most successful performers, selling over 20 million records, including numerous hit singles (three of which reached number one in the charts). To deny him his place in the pantheon of pop is simply to whitewash our own cultural history.
[4] It's not that this debate isn't philosophically interesting - involving as it does questions concerning ethics and aesthetics - it's just too big and wide-ranging to address here. What I would say is that whilst it's clear that bad people can make good art, it's less certain whether the morally virtuous can produce anything other than mediocre work (at best).
