The Life of a Song: 'Downtown'

Fifty years ago the man who coined the phrase "special relationship" died. Winston Churchill was 90 and had lived long enough to witness pop music realise the ties he argued for between Britain and the US.

It was 1965, the second year of the British invasion of the US charts. On January 23, the day before Churchill's death, Petula Clark claimed the 10th British invasion number one with "Downtown", almost exactly a year after "I Want to Hold Your Hand", by The Beatles. Clark was the first British woman to top the US charts since Vera Lynn's "Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart" in 1952.

"Downtown" is a perfect example of Anglo-Americana. It was written by the London-based songwriter and producer Tony Hatch after visiting New York. The lyrics describe a wanderer finding solace in Manhattan's noisy streets. Bright orchestral pop gives the bustle an enchanting swing, until at the end a wild trumpet solo muscles in like a young tough from West Side Story. Among the crack musicians was a young Jimmy Page, later of Led Zeppelin, at the time a session guitarist.

Hatch meant to offer the song to a US group, the Drifters. But Clark, a former child star whose career had stalled, pounced when he played her an unfinished version. Thus a song full of Americanisms was immortalised by a singer from Surrey with impeccable tones, the sort of voice that speaks of jolly good shows, not "sidewalks".

The British invasion habituated American listeners to pop songs sung in the accents of the old country. But Clark's Englishness was pronounced. The effect was amplified by the lyrics' transatlantic lingo and the tendency of other invasion acts to use mid-Atlantic accents, such as the Dave Clark Five.

Hatch feared a US audience wouldn't accept Clark's cut-glass pronunciation. But a US record label executive knew better. Joe Smith of Warner Bros, which released the song in the US, understood its sparkle lay precisely in its mingling of similarity and difference. Hatch's inexpert grasp of American urban terminology, for instance, meant the song should really be called "Midtown", the actual location of the neon signs and movie theatres it lauds.

The song re-established Clark as one of the UK's biggest singing stars. Covers followed almost instantly, as with the identikit version on Sandie Shaw's debut album a month later. Frank Sinatra attempted a breezy interpretation in 1966, when he was trying to keep up with the new pop generation, but badly misjudged the song by treating it as a joke.

Glenn Gould was more respectful in 1967 when he published a dense musicological essay in praise of Petula Clark. "Downtown", according to the classical pianist, was an "affirmative diatonic exhortation in the key of E major", while the singer's voice, in a catchier phrase, "was fiercely loyal to its one great octave".

The song has continued to bounce back and forth across the Atlantic, as when Dolly Parton turned it into splashy Nashville pop in 1984. But it has resonance outside the Anglosphere too.

When Clark made "Downtown" she was based in Paris, having reinvented herself as a chanteuse after her British career flagged. She recorded a French version of the song called "Dans le Temps" in which New York turned into Paris. She also sang a German version ("Geh in die Stadt") and an Italian one ("Ciao Ciao"). "Downtown" isn't just a peerless example of Churchill's "special relationship", it also marks pop's evolution into a global lingua franca.

For a podcast with clips from the songs, visit ft.com/culturecast

Main photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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