The Art Movement were a late 60s British band who joined the ranks of many other bands with needlessly pretentious names and put out five little-heard singles before disbanding. This is a good, catchy song, a fact which debunks my poorly-researched claim that there are only three good British bubblegum songs. Oh well! It was written Eric Woolfson, a prolific Glaswegian musician/songwriter/producers who went on to work with Mick Jagger and write for Broadway and stuff. “YSNS” is a gleefully fast-paced number that begins with organ rapidly playing the same note over and over, punctuated by a low drum, just like “Yummy Yummy Yummy” but a little faster-paced. It achieves drama through a run of staccato eighth notes that shift to dotted rhythms and long organ tones as it builds to the chorus. Downward swoopy harp glissandoes appear between lyric couplets and in the chorus. Near the end there’s a short “breakdown” with handclaps, laughter, and gleeful vocalizations like “brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”, suggesting a fun party atmosphere. The singer’s voice has a nuggets-rock hoarseness to it.
Lyrically, this is one of three late-60s songs to be based on the “yes sir, no sir trope.” The Kinks one is an antiauthoritarian satire of the British army as a place where recruits need “permission to breathe,” and the The Ohio Express one will be addressed in a future post. This “Yes Sir, No Sir” takes the form of a rather unclear conversation between a guy and a character or speaker who’s trying to persuade him to leave his girlfriend:
Go west young man, just as fast as you can, you better run run run
Better to forget her, get her out of your mind, have fun, fun fun
What if she says she don’t want to be free?
Then you better tell her to forget about me
What if she asks if you still love her true?
I do, i do, you know that I do
I said yes sir, no sir, I don’t think so sir
Three bags of [inaudible,] I’m no fool
Yes sir, no, sir, go go go sir,
Nothing you can say can make me blow my cool
Go west young man, just as fast as you can, you better run run run
Aintcha gonna go, it’s time in your life to have fun fun fun
Promises promises, thats all you say, i will write a letter to her every day
A promise is a promise, its hard to fulfill
I will, I will, you know that I will
[Repeat chorus 2x]
It seems that the main guy wants to leave home, but can’t resist making half-sincere promises to stay true to his girlfriend while he’s gone. However, it’s not really clear here who is speaking when — the beginning seems to be from the perspective of a speaker urging him to leave; other lyrics in the first person (“nothing you can say can make me blow my cool”) seem to represent the main character talking to his girlfriend, or maybe this line represents the speaker telling the character what he should say to his girlfriend. The yes sir/no sir bit suggests the ambivalence with which the young man contemplates his future, but to whom is the “sir” is actually addressed? The song’s ambiguity and repeated shifts in point of view are interesting, even if they result from nothing more than half-assed lyric writing. 3 stars.
Bubblegum Reviews 