ANTHONY NEWLEY - “Do You Mind?”
Sorry about that!
(30th April 1960)
Newley’s second No.1 is a big step up from “Why?”, thanks mostly to a sympathetic Shadows-indebted backing which lets Newley sound flirtatious instead of just unctious. The lyrics don’t give him much wiggle-room, though. “If I say I love you, do you mind? Make an idol of you, do you mind?” - there are not many ways for a cheeky London chappie to play those.
And so the strange false start of modern British pop fades out with a record that’s uninspiring but hardly a disgrace. Newley, like Adam Faith, had no further No.1s, just a respectable second-tier hit-making career before a turn back to acting (where Englishness has always found ways to pay well). The cockney-pop blueprint hadn’t taken - I think the London focus was part of the problem. Newley and Faith look forward to Mary Poppins more than to Please Please Me, entertaining enough but perhaps already a stereotype, lacking the freshness needed for a bigger impact on pop. 4
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Marcello Carlin on July 25th, 2007
Then again, Newley and Barry did go on to co-write “Goldfinger” which is a faintly logical modernist outcome of the Faith/Newley parallel.