This week for Song Lyric Sunday I’m playing you something a little different from my usual suspects. Jim’s post Age Is A Measurement Of Time – an accurate title – tells us that our task is to play a song from the year that we were born, which as I reach 71 in a couple of weeks means that I am looking at 1953. Pop music charts here in the UK were in their infancy in those days: the first one, a Top Twelve, had been published in New Musical Express magazine – known as the NME – in late 1952, and was extended to a Top Twenty in 1954. Prior to that charts had only existed for sales of sheet music, reflecting the fact that we tended to make our own entertainment. My Mum was a very good pianist and had several boxes of sheet music beside her piano, mostly light classical and pop songs, and until my voice broke I was encouraged to use my boy treble voice to sing along with her. It all went downhill later, but before it did we had some fun with today’s first tune.

For my 60th birthday I posted a very long piece about what had happened in that year: QE2’s coronation, the first ascent to the top of Mount Everest, and all sorts of other things. I reworked this a couple of times, the most recent of these in 2019, which you can find here if you fancy a social and cultural history lesson: 1953 And All That. In that piece I included the songs that were top of the UK and US hit parades (yes, we did call it that) in the week I was born. I’m going to be playing one of those again today, as an early birthday celebration, but I’m leading with another UK #1 from that year for the same singer, Guy Mitchell. This one is a bit of fun, and is one that I remember hearing on the radio as I was growing up:

The lyrics are unlikely to win a Nobel Literature Prize but here they are anyway: