Of course the deconstruction of the lyrics is totally correct-but thats not taking into account the SPIRIT of the song/arrangement/performance which is obviously playful,coitish(htf do you spell that?),’throwaway’ (in a good way) and camp…
She’s just acting a part-For me its like a little cameo in a comedy musical or something..

its not meant to be taken deadly serious lol

Can’t wait for it!

In her February newsletter Sandie wrote:

To celebrate with all those people who have enjoyed my music I have a very special gift. It will be available exclusively here for free download for 60 days starting February 26th. It is a song which has been the source of much grief, hilarity, circumspection and I have to admit, financial reward for many years. Yes you know the one, ‘Puppet on a String.’ But this is like you have never heard it before. Courtesy of my very good friend, Howard Jones, who spends much time locked up in a recording studio with his vast array of technology nowadays, I have completely turned everything around; so much so that I am really proud of my efforts. It actually sounds super cool. Yes I know that might seem a contradiction in terms but it really does - you’ll see, or rather, hear.

I went to visit Howard one day and he was sitting at his keyboards playing around with some really beautiful chords and he started humming a bit of a soulful melody over it. ‘That’s nice.’ I remarked. ‘You try it,’he suggested. I did and it felt really good. I suddenly realised that this was the dreaded ‘Puppet.’ ‘Don’t loose your nerve,’ he coaxed, ‘let’s see if you can change your karma.’ So we finished it off, recorded it and sent it to a young, hip producer/mixer, Andy Gray who re-arranged and mixed the track and voila! I am cured! I really love it - I hope you do too. It is my very special birthday present to you on my 60th. Please tell your friends to come to the site to pick up their gift.

That she was co-erced into singing it because of sexist bigotry just makes it worse. Still at least Moz and Marr would eventually rescue her from ignominy and she’d repay them by rolling round the TOTP stage like a drunken auntie at a wedding…

Tommy Mack

(Though I still don’t think it’s that bad a record, but my eurovision tolerance is very high…)

I should do that EU-Eurovision analysis that mark s posits! Sounds perfect for me. Maybe when my current project finishes…?

jeff w

There’s more to the story than Sandie’s career being on the wane. In February 1967, she was named as a respondent in a divorce suit (some rock musician, but I’ve never been able to find out the name). Sexual adventurism was fine for MALE pop stars, but the double standard was still strongly in effect, and it was NOT alright for a woman. Sandie was told by her manager, Eve Taylor, that the BBC was about to ban her from any further appearances unless she cleaned up her act (so to speak). Since then, she’s said she doesn’t know if it was actually true, but her manager convinced her as much.

At any rate, Eve Taylor was more than eager to push Sandie, now a “mature” twenty, into “family entertainment,” whereas Sandie wanted to make a transition into an edgier, more progressive sort of rock/pop. (Remember the earlier discussion re: “Always Something There to Remind Me” about the re-release of Sandie’s long-lost album Reviewing the Situation?) But “Puppet on a String” was forced on her as a sort of penance for being a “fallen woman.”

She says she went along with it because the song was so awful that she couldn’t imagine it would ever win any sort of prize–but it did. (One cannot underestimate public taste.) And it became her biggest hit. She came to hate the song (both for the insipid passive female lyrics and for what it did to her subsequent career) so much that she was later known to walk out of interviews if anyone asked her about it. I may be wrong, but I think she refused to sing it during any of her 1980s comeback gigs.

Sad ironies abound here. Of the 1960s Brit girls, Sandie was second only to Dusty (and had three number ones next to Dusty’s one). For female pop stars, family entertainment was almost a requisite fate once they reached a certain age–or when the sixties ended. (Think Cilla Black for worst case scenario.) The same would befall Lulu two years later, when she won Eurovision with “Boom-Bang-a-Bang,” her worst record ever with much of the same kitschy clockwork ambience as “Puppet on a String.”

The logistics of an ever-expanding European community being represented at E’vision also map onto political issues of course!