MIDDLE OF THE ROAD – “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”
One of the great, endlessly rediscovered truths of pop is that there are rhythms so addictive they make content irrelevant. “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”, a song about an abandoned bird performed terrace-chant style by a choir of buzz-voiced irritants, does not quite achieve this, but its handclaps and glitter beat is propulsive enough for them to almost get away with it. Certainly the reputation of “Chirpy Chirpy” as an all time pop crime seems unfair – “it’s moronic”, “it’s repetitive”, cry the detractors*, and it’s not that they’re wrong exactly, but their objections miss the point: the problem with the song is that with a bit less twang on the voice, and a bit more thunder in the drums, it could have broken through annoying into awesome.
*I researched said detraction online and found one marvellous comment box claim that “CCCC” is a song about the Vietnam War! Another great truth of pop I think is that EVERY song recorded between 1967 and 1972 is on some level (usually that of Interweb maniacs) about the Vietnam War.
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OK, first heard this song not in this version but in a mix-and-match dance remix on a cheap cassette out of Singapore. Vastly better; hearing it, you’d realize what a fundamentally great song it is. Probably wasn’t actually recorded/mixed in Singapore but in Italy or Germany, which is where the East Beat Singapore pirates pulled a lot of their material; in fact, I think the draggy old Middle Of The Road’s version was also recorded in Italy. Anyway, Tom, just want you to know there’s an amazing version out there, unfortunately I don’t know whom by. This is terrible compared to that one – no wonder Mama’s gone. She’s bored. But still, this is such a great tune it’s at least a 7 in any version not sung by barking dogs. Also, the disparity between word and melody is truly bizarre.
This song was all over the AM airwaves when I was a child, right about the time when the Viet Nam conflict had reach it’s boiling point and divided America into two camps. That bit said, there’s been so many covers recorded and quite a few in foreign languages, Mickie Krause’s German dance mix Riesse Die Hutte Ab to name in particular. As said above, a catchy little tune yet to appear in a TV commercial to sell soft drinks or personal computers.-Post Script: Harold (Lally) Stott did release a quirky B/W video to this song, it’s posted on YouTube and worth a peek. Yes, Middle Of The Road had their own version available on that site as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jZG-UugBrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BOcTVHmq_k
But still, this is such a great tune it’s at least a 7 in any version not sung by barking dogs.
clearly the barking dogs version would be a 10?
What are the thoughts of the Mac and Katie kissoon version>thatwas the hit in the US!
In reply to “bramble” November 2006.
I Knew Lally Stott having lived only a few miles away from him in St.Helens Merseyside, he came from Shore Lane Prescot between St.Helens & Liverpool. Lally went living in Italy and became a big pop star there and married the daughter of a high ranking official, possibly the head of the milatary forces,Lally had a massive hit with Chirpy in Italy but his was a much slower version. He then divorced and returned to England and lived with his mother in Prescot. He bought himself a Jaguar but on that fateful day he borrowed his mothers moped to quickly go on an errand to Prescot and was knocked off the moped and killed. The biography of Middle of the Road group going to Italy and recording the song sounds feasable considering the writer Lally was living there at the time. However, to my knowledge he never owned or rode a Harley Davidson, he was not really into motor bikes so I don’t think the story about him being killed on a Harley is correct, thinking about it,in those days you could ride a moped with “L” plates using a car licence, you only needed a motor bike one for anything over 250cc at that time.
and Mac and Katie kissoon had a hit in the UK with an Abba song, before Abba had even had any! (Hits in the UK, that is)
Incorrect. Their first hit single after their cover of “CCCC” was “Sugar Candy Kisses” in January 1975, which was not only not written by Abba (it was another Bickerton/Waddington production) but charted nine months after “Waterloo.”
ah, soz, it was the now forgotten “Sweet Dreams”…
They were another duo, sort of. As in, the guy sang no backing vocals and took the lead vocal for the middle eight, twice.
“Honey Honey” was the song. T’was a hit before Abba etc…
Again, not quite the case; the Sweet Dreams version charted in July ’74, three months after “Waterloo.”
Sweet Dreams were in fact a very controversial duo; one of them was ex-Pickettywitch singer Polly Brown who blacked up for photos and TV appearances since we weren’t supposed to know it was her. The record still went top ten but there was a huge outcry about the blacking up and it pretty much killed Polly’s career stone dead; witness the brilliant “Up In A Puff Of Smoke” which came out under her own name three months later and petered out after peaking at #43.
I remember that one. 43? Blimey, I’d have thought it was higher. Then again, all those “First Choice” type singers went the way round about then.
On the Radio Clyde Tartan Thirty show they used the “going up, going up, going up up UP” bit as a jingle to indicate that a record was, erm, going up the chart.
Heh, that’d probably be worth 3p to the writer. And in these d/l times, songs do actually move up the charts once again!
I remember J Saville always comparing this lot to Abba – cos they had a run of number Euro number ones and a blonde haired singer, I guess. Came and went sharpish in England but Marcello I’m intrigued by these Scottish charts. Were they published anywhere?
Quick look at the Norwegian chart book reveals CCCC was no.1 for 12 weeks, Soley Soley for 7 and Sacramento for 9! Bigger than Abba (well, for a bit) who only ever managed two no.1s in Frida’s homeland.
No.2 watch: Hurricane Smith’s Don’t Let It Die – first eco hit?
No.4 watch: John Kongos’s He’s Gonna Step On You Again was the first drum loop on a hit record, and still sounds dark and thrilling.
In response to Alan Pennington on January 16th, 2008:
there exists a photo of Lally Stott in the studio with Middle of the Road when they were recording “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”. It’s on Middle of the Road’s web site. So he clearly had input into their version of his song.
Thanks for your personal account of Stott’s life.
I much prefer the Mac and Katy Kissoon version, but then I am American and they had the hit here. But just objectively it’s a marvelous, driving, percussion-filled production that is a little masterpiece all unto itself – a very well-made and well-performed record that creates a lot of excitement in the listener, tinged with the haunting sadness – and scariness – of the lyric.
I heared “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” for the first time in as long as I can remember. I thought it was awful. So repetative. The same lines over and over again. It sounds like it was written and recorded in 10 minutes. Even the title to the song is dodgy. I don’t like bad mouthing songs, by the way.
Sweet little birds Chirping away! For 35 years I thought it was about abandoning a child or something!! Now I can sleep at night.
I remember CCCC when it went at or near what you Brits would call “top of the pops” in the early Seventies. It was inescapable on WFHG-Bristol, Virginia.
I despised the song then; but like so many things, the ludicrous, with time, comes back as camp.
A few months ago I was listening to Chicago’s FM station “Jack 104.3,” slogan “We Play What We Want” (as long as it’s from post-1970 and/or alternative). They played “Manamana,” a total nonce song consisting only of the world “Manamana” with rhythm and first and funilly peformed, as far as I know, on the Muppets’ syndicated TV show which aired here in 1971. That became “alternative” music! I loved the song and the concept! BTW you should find the vid on a Dutch website; we did.
“CCCC” by a power-rock girl group? What do y’all think? – al, chicago illinois USA
I was certainly rather cross that this kept Hurricane Smith off the top but was quite taken with Sally Carr so I tend not to produce a cloth of garlic whenever I hear it. I too did not associate CCCC with tweety birds but indeed assumed it was about a mother abandoning her kid. The fact that this did not appear to me to be strange was explained, probably, by the fact that many silly songs (and nursary rhymes) have very odd and indeed disagreeable subject matter. I thought “Soley Soley” was a good deal better.
very interesting bloke Hurricane Smith: World War II bomber crew member, named himself after a film title,Beatles engineer (nicknamed ‘Normal’ by John Lennon), early Pink Floyd producer, making it as a pop star at 50, made his last record in the mid-noughties when he was in his early 80s when he was still appearing at Beatles conventions
quite liked his 3 UK hits as evocative of the early 70s for me as Dickie Davies on “World Of Sport” at Saturday dinnertimes, the Flaxton Boys, Esso Blue adverts and the disabled bloke coming round in his invalid carriage selling eggs and football coupons.
“very interesting bloke Hurricane Smith….named himself after a film title…”
I always thought it was some kind of play on the recent Thunderclap Newman hit…
He named himself after a 1942 film remade at least twice subsequently – in my 7 year old mind I used to get him confused with Hurricane Higgins who also broke through in 1972!
I looked CCCC up to remind myself of the name of their blond lead singer, which I gather was Sally Carr. Where I grew up, in the Muirhead and Moodiesburn area, in the seventies, we used to be told by our elders of a local girl who was a ‘pop’ star. This exotic ‘creature’ could occasionally be glimpsed driving a convertable sports car, a Mercedes I think (yes I am a man), of course we gazed slack-jawed as she drove past on her way to the shops for a packet of Fags or loaf of bread, we children imagining her to be on her way to perform on TOTPs or other ‘star studded’ event. Anyway, I was wondering what became of her, I hope she is well and living in jewel- encrusted luxuary on a sun kissed private island, obviously paid for with the vast amount of money gained in royalties and fees she must have earned(sorry, Sally).
Yes I know the band were called Middle of the Road and the song was called CCCC, but I missed the edit deadline. Told you I was a moron!
Haha! I’m 5 years old again! The flavour of butterscotch Angel Delight is fresh in my mouth and I’m wiggling my hips like a mad thing. It was a constant feature of kids parties for quite some time, this one and “Locomotion”.
As a child I thought this song was sung by a black soul band and it was about an african american family in the south of America, when they woke up in the morning their mother had been lynched. I listened to it over and over.. I found out today that it is about a baby bird in a nest…..I feel like a part of my personality was shaped through the sadness I felt in hearing this song. I still find it to be a VERY sad song….
Not a little baby called Don, then?
You didn’t mean 0.4 (instead of 4) by any chance?
My nomination for the worst No 1 of the 1970s.
Saw Middle of the Road when they toured in the 70s. They were really good .
#51 Mark – you are exactly right, it is ‘little baby Don’.
Online transcriptions of the lyrics that say ‘little baby bird’ are simply wrong. Every version I’ve ever heard says ‘little baby Don’. The original version by Lally Stott, who wrote the song, can be heard on Youtube and he clearly sings ‘little baby Don’. Case closed.
It’s clearly about a baby boy being orphaned or abandoned. Oh what jolly pop tunes we used to have.