There has always been a sort of sixties, chamber-pop vibe lurking at the back of many of George Wilding’s songs, a faint err of balladic nostalgia, a feeling of more innocent times, a more straightforward, more honest, and direct approach to pop music, for pop music is what it is.
The new one seems to bring that lingering background retrospective nature to the fore, and it isn’t hard to see the connection between the reference point that I’m told helped ground the song— Bobby Vee’s “Take Good Care of My Baby”—and this modern-day take on the same sonic vibe.
But despite a nod to those more innocent times, there is something wonderfully subversive found here. Songs of that pre-rock and roll era seemed to be simpler, sweet celebrations of love, but if a title such as “Isn’t She Lovely” would be the ultimate tribute to the girl of your dreams, with just the change of one letter, George completely flips the script and turns a love ballad into the soundtrack to heartache. So if the sonic vibe is similar, the lyrics are the exact opposite.
“Isn’t She Lonely” still sounds like classic George Wilding, but if you transported him back to the early sixties, he would have had such a memorable anti-love song and controversial pop hit on his hands that we would probably still be talking about today. But you know what they say about the cyclical nature of music fashion, and so a song that may have missed its perfect day in the sixties sun is also wonderfully ahead of the curve…if you get what I mean.
