When it comes to music , teenage girls are often right. They were right about girl groups, about The Beatles and T-Rex. They’re probably right about Taylor Swift and they’re definitely right about Harry Styles.
And they’ve always known that it’s the single, not the album, that is the true currency of pop music. Here’s this week’s Herald Magazine contention: that any band that hasn’t made a great single isn't a great band. That doesn’t mean those singles are always recognised, of course.
Or even stay in the memory. But then it’s all the more fun to rediscover them. So, here are 10 Scottish singles that deserve to be better known.
Oh Me Oh My (I’m a Fool for You Baby) Lulu, 1969 Obviously, Lulu’s finest three minutes is her bruised rendition of Don Black and Mark London’s ballad To Sir With Love. But in 1969 the singer headed to the Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama to work with producers Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin and musicians including Barry Beckett, Eddie Hinton and Duane Allman on her New Routes album. Lulu’s take on Hinton’s song Where’s Eddie on New Routes may be the second-best thing she’s ever done, but the single that preceded the LP was this song written by Scottish songwriter Jim Doris.
Lulu is always just a big chorus away from being a blues belter, but this is a restrained, rather lovely performance. Proof that Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie could cut it as a soul singer. Aretha Franklin recorded her own version of the s.
