VERA LYNN - “My Son My Son”
(5th November 1954)
My God My God. One of the defences of the sales-based UK charts I regularly offer is that it impartially reflects anyone who is buying singles, not just the people record labels and radios would like to be buying them. This means the charts can be regularly mugged by tots and grannies taking a fancy to a particular single. On paper this is a victory for unpredictability and punter power, in actual fact it means Dame Vera and “My Son My Son” can get to Number One.
If you asked most people with an interest in rock what pre-rock pop sounded like - the stuff that Elvis shimmied into destruction according to the official histories - they’d imagine something not unlike “My Son”. Sledgehammer production, tottering sentimentality, a complete and deliberate absence of youth: this one has it all! If there was ever a battle between this old music and that imminent new one then this was so defeated, so comprehensively annihilated that now it seems like an archaeological find, not an old enemy, not even quaint. 2
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Keith W on March 21st, 2008
The song isn’t very good, but I think you’re letting your 2003 view of Dame Vera colour your thinking on this one. She was only 37 here - she was younger than Frankie Laine, for example. If she got to number one now, you could chalk it up to Granny Power, but back then this was surely just the kind of stuff that people bought.