{"id":1619,"date":"2018-01-12T09:07:43","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T09:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2018-01-11T09:26:03","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T09:26:03","slug":"song-of-the-week-downtown-by-petula-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=1619","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Week: &#8220;Downtown&#8221; by Petula Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.<\/p>\n<p>This is &#8220;Downtown&#8221; by Petula Clark:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Zx06XNfDvk0\" width=\"392\" height=\"220\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Downtown&#8221; pops into my head now and again, usually while I&#8217;m riding my bicycle, for some reason. It happened earlier this week while I was unlocking my bike and I started wondering about the writing of it, because I was pretty sure it was written by an Englishman (it was: Tony Hatch), and obviously the original version was recorded by Petula Clark, also English. The thing is, here in London, and in the UK generally, nobody talks about &#8220;downtown&#8221;; they talk about &#8220;the city centre&#8221; [sic]. If you make a quick sing through of &#8220;Downtown&#8221; but replace the title word with &#8220;city centre&#8221; you quickly find it&#8217;s a lousy song (it doesn&#8217;t work with &#8220;city center&#8221; either). So there I was, putting my bike lock in my bag, wondering whether this was just some English songwriter trying to sound American. This explanation&#8211;some guy in London or wherever trying to sound American&#8211;didn&#8217;t really satisfy me because the song doesn&#8217;t sound fake or faked in that way, either musically or lyrically.\u00a0 It turns out that Wikipedia has a really good entry on &#8220;Downtown&#8221;, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Downtown_(Petula_Clark_song)#Background\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">section on its composition<\/a> quotes from an interview with Tony Hatch that solves my idle dilemma: &#8220;I was staying at a hotel on Central Park and I wandered down to Broadway and to Times Square and, naively, I thought I was downtown.&#8221; There&#8217;s a little more that follows from there, but anyway, I&#8217;m charmed by this part of the story behind the song.\u00a0 I also learned from reading Wikipedia that one of the guitar players on &#8220;Downtown&#8221; is Jimmy Page.<\/p>\n<p>One of the things that makes &#8220;Downtown&#8221; a good song is that it seems to be a showtune trying its hardest to be a rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll number. I guess maybe it sounds as charming as the anecdote behind it. Also, I like that little harmon-muted trumpet solo that plays the song out.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Downtown%22%20by%20Petula%20Clark\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it. This is &#8220;Downtown&#8221; by Petula Clark: &#8220;Downtown&#8221; pops into my head now and again, usually while I&#8217;m riding my bicycle, for some reason. It happened earlier this week while I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Downtown%22%20by%20Petula%20Clark\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-week","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}