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Downtown (song)
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"Downtown" is a pop song composed by Tony Hatch following a first-time visit to New York City. It was his original intention to present it to The Drifters, but when British singer Petula Clark heard the incomplete tune, she proposed that if he could write lyrics to match the quality of the melody, she would be interested in recording it.
Thirty minutes before the song was scheduled to be recorded, Hatch was still completing the lyrics in the studio's washroom.
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Encyclopedia
"Downtown" is a pop song composed by Tony Hatch following a first-time visit to New York City. It was his original intention to present it to The Drifters, but when British singer Petula Clark heard the incomplete tune, she proposed that if he could write lyrics to match the quality of the melody, she would be interested in recording it.
Thirty minutes before the song was scheduled to be recorded, Hatch was still completing the lyrics in the studio's washroom. "Downtown" was released in late 1964 and became a best seller in English, French, Italian, and German versions, topping music charts worldwide (with 3 million copies sold in the US alone) and introducing Clark, who had been a popular recording artist and actress in Europe for nearly 20 years, to the American record-buying public. She continued her success in the United States with a string of fifteen consecutive Top 40 hits.
"Downtown" was the first song by a British female artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart and went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Rock and Roll Song. It was enrolled in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004.
Clark re-recorded the song three times, in 1976 (with a disco beat), in 1984 (with a new piano and trumpet intro that leads into the song's original opening), and in 1996. In addition, the original 1964 recording was remixed and re-released in 1988, 1999, and 2003. Clark, who in the early 1960s maintained a concurrent non-English musical career throughout Europe, also recorded French, German and Italian versions in 1964. While the German version retained the original title, the French version was retitled Dans le Temps and the Italian version was called Ciao Ciao.
Following 9/11, New York City adopted Clark's version of "Downtown" as the theme song for a series of commercials encouraging tourism to Lower Manhattan. The song has been used by other metropolitan areas — including Chicago, Indianapolis, and Singapore — for promotional purposes as well.
Awards
- Grammy Award for "Best Rock and Roll Song" 1965
- Ivor Novello Award for "Outstanding Song of the Year" 1964
- Silver Record (1964) Awarded for 250,000 UK sales
- Gold Record (1965) Awarded for One Million UK sales
- Gold Record (1965) Awarded for One Million US sales
- Cash Box International Gold Award (1965)
- Radio Caroline Bell Award (UK) (1965)
- Grammy Hall of Fame (2003)
- Film & TV Music Award for Best Use of a Song in a Television Program (2007)
Covers
"Downtown" has been covered numerous times by other artists since Clark's original recording, notably by Dolly Parton in 1984. After she recorded the track in December 1983, "Downtown" appeared on Parton's album of cover versions, The Great Pretender. It was followed by a single release of the track on RCA Records in April 1984 and proved to be a moderate success, peaking at number eighty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart and number twenty-seven on the Hot Country Songs chart in the United States. Parton's version altered some of the lyrics: "Listen to the rhythm of a gentle bossa nova" became "Listen to the rhythm of the music that they're playing".
Clark's fellow British songbird Sandie Shaw covered the song on her debut 1965 album Sandie. Allan Sherman's 1965 parody (same melody, comedy lyrics) called "Crazy Downtown" was his second-biggest selling single. Frank Sinatra covered the song on his 1966 album Strangers in the Night.
The B-52's recorded a revamped version for their 1979 debut album The B-52's.
Skinny Puppy vocalist Nivek Ogre and Invisible Records owner Martin Atkin's one-off collaboration project Rx (aka Ritalin) covered the song on their album Bedside Toxicology. In the mid-1990s, jazz group the Holly Cole Trio recorded a version with updated lyrics. The song was also covered by Icelandic singer Björk and the Brodsky Quartet in a concert at London's Union Chapel.
Iida Kaori, a J-Pop singer within Hello! Project, covered the French version of this song on her album, Osavurio ~Ai wa Matte Kurenai~, in 2003.
The Killer Barbies released their version of "Downtown" in 2000. In 2007, Canadian singer-songwriter Jann Arden covered the song for her album, Uncover Me.
Emma Bunton version
English singer Emma Bunton released "Downtown" in November 2006. The single was selected as the 2006 BBC Children in Need single, with all proceeds from the release going to the charity. It is the lead single from Bunton's third studio album entitled Life in Mono.
Music video
Directed by Harvey & Carolyn, (the directors who also directed her video for her single "Maybe") the sexually suggestive music video for the single is set in a hotel bedroom featuring Bunton as a maid. It includes appearances from contestants from the BBC's reality television show Strictly Come Dancing (the format to which has been sold worldwide under the name Dancing with the Stars) and features cameos from Matt Dawson, Louisa Lytton, Carol Smillie, Spoony, Mark Ramprakash, Claire King, Peter Schmeichel, Craig Revel Horwood, Anton du Beke, Brendan Cole, Erin Boag, Lilia Kopylova, Karen Hardy, and Darren Bennett. Though the lyrics are innocuous, in the video Bunton's body language clearly twists the song title into a euphemism for sexual activity. Bunton, however, has denied this repeatedly, for example in this interview with online music magazine Popjustice:
Popjustice: "The dancers in the 'Downtown' video seem to know you very well indeed. So well that they are all pointing at your fanny. Was this your idea?"
Bunton: "I don't understand where this has come from. It is a dance routine and it is nothing to do with anything like that. It is everyone else's dirty little minds. Especially yours. It worries me because it is a classic and you can't make classics rude."
Track listings and formats
These are the formats and track listings of major single releases of "Downtown".
- "Downtown"
- "Downtown" (Elements Club Mix)
- "Downtown"
- "Something Tells Me"
- "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps"
- "Downtown" (video)
Chart performance
Upon release, "Downtown" entered the UK Singles Chart at number twenty-four on digital sales only; it rose to number three the following week when it received its full release, making the song Bunton's highest-charting single since "What Took You So Long?" in 2001.
Appearance in popular culture
- "Downtown" was played in scenes in the episode "She Said, He Said, She Said" of Disney Channel's Lizzie McGuire.
- In the Season 3 premiere episode of Lost, "A Tale of Two Cities", Elizabeth Mitchell's character Juliet Burke had this song playing in her home in the opening scene. The song was heard again in a flashback sequence in the season 3 episode "One of Us".
- The song was used in "The Bottle Deposit, Part 1" episode of Seinfeld, where Jerry and George are discussing the meaning of Mr. Whilhelm's instructions (part of some important project that George is in charge of): "Everything you need... is downtown".
- The song also was used in episode 272 ("Uncle Charley's Aunt") of the television series My Three Sons. Originally aired on February 17, 1968, the episode had Tina Cole as Katie singing the popular song with the rest of the Douglas family. They then decide to perform the song at Uncle Charley's local lodge when he's forced to put together a matinee performance, but all but one member of the family ends up not being able to attend.
- In the movie Girl, Interrupted, starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, the girls at Claymoore sang it together.
- In the 1991 movie Flight of the Intruder, starring Willem Dafoe and Brad Johnson, Defoe and Johnson sing it together in an A-6 Intruder cockpit on their way back from a prohibited bombing run on a Hanoi SAM missile depot.
- The song is briefly mentioned in the movie Short Circuit 2, as part of a plot device using the names of songs as clues.
- In an episode of Will & Grace, Will first met Val when she completed the song after he began humming it.
- In 1987, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (later to become better known as The KLF) sampled large chunks of "Downtown" to make their new single "Down Town".
- Jackson Browne's 1983 album Lawyers in Love contained a Browne composition also titled "Downtown". While an entirely different song, Browne ad-libbed a few lines of his song to the melody of the Hatch/Clark original at the end, as the song faded out.
- The pop-punk band Green Day use the melody of "Downtown" for their song "Waiting", on their 2000 album Warning.
- The song was sung by Lucille Bluth to General Anderson to get her son Buster out of military service in the Arrested Development episode "Switch Hitter".
- The song was used in a Fido Solutions advertisement.
- The song was heard on the soundtrack of the 1993 film Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. The classical pianist considered Petula Clark the best female vocalist of his generation and published several essays praising her talent and achievements .
- In the 1993 episode of The Simpsons entitled "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", the Be Sharps hold an audition to replace Chief Wiggum. Groundskeeper Willie performs the song in his audition and, with his Scottish accent, pronounces the title as "Doontoon".
- The song was used to introduce a feature on Children's BBC where viewers could send in pictures of themselves in their town (hence "Downtown") to presenter Phillip Schofield.
- The song was used in an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., sung in a karaoke bar.
- The song was used in an advertising campaign by the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball for the opening season of Pacific Bell Park in 2000.
- During the Vietnam war in 1965, United States pilots sent to bomb targets in heavily defended Hanoi during Operation Rolling Thunder were said to go "downtown", in a time when servicemen would adopt many names from popular culture such as "the Jolly Green Giant" and "Fat Albert".
- The song is featured in television ads for VISA credit cards that began airing in the US in March 2007. It is performed by Niki Haris.
- The French language version of the song was used in the Canadian movie waydowntown.
- The song was used during the opening scenes of Jaws 2 in 1978.
- Amanda Price sings it to Elizabeth Bennet's peers in Lost in Austen which sees a modern-day Londoner trapped inside Jane Austen's fictional world of Pride and Prejudice.
- The Song was recently used in an episode of Coronation Street for the episode where Liam Connor is murdered.
- ABC used this for thier promotion campaign for the new Good Morning America in Times Square to encourage viewers to stop by.
External links
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