100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #74 The Young Rascals – Groovin’

Released: 1967

So when everything in pop is somehow British, how do you respond as an American artist? Well, the media didn’t really get it, The Baltimore sun musing in late 1963 that “Beatles go home might be just the thing.” The legendary DJ Wolfman Jack was similary disdainful, claiming that real rock n’ roll had been usurped by mop top soundalikes, but within a year nearly every radio station across the country had been subject to a polite and friendly takeover.

The Young Rascals formed in New Jersey in 1965, at more or less the phenomenon’s high water mark, and would-be impresario and manager Sid Bernstein even cheekily used the Fab Four’s aura as a promotional tool off the back of their headline gig at Shea Stadium.

Becoming copyists however simply wasn’t their style. In singer Eddie Brigati they had a vocalist with no little soul, and together with songwriter and organist Felix Cavaliere he shifted the group’s style towards a more Latin influenced sound. Inspired by precious Sundays Cavaliere spent with his girlfriend, Groovin’ was their second Billboard number one, a gentle piano roll, wispy keyboards and angelic harmonies conveying summers in the park and nothing to do but dream. If anyone was still worried about barbarians at the gates it certainly didn’t sound like it.