Maybe it’s just me, but this feels like an appropriate song for New Year’s Day, especially with the touch of… bitterness, perhaps? pessimism, or sadness, maybe, that follows the title (“This will be our year/Took a long time to come,” remember). I first heard this song in the dying days of Britpop was Menswear covered it as b-side for their second last single, and it sounded like pop music was supposed to in some weird way; ramshackle, joyous and with harmonies and piano and its heart on its sleeve. Years later, even though I’ve since discovered the Zombies and the joys of Odessey and Oracle, the album that the song first appeared on, the Menswear version is still my favorite version of the song; there’s a happiness to it that feels… more genuine, perhaps, less precious, than even the original to me, with its Brian May-esque guitars and the feeling that they’re rushing the song, like they just have to get it out (It helps that it ends with someone saying “Yowza!” for no immediately apparent reason. Don’t ask me why, but it does).
(Yes, I know that they get the lyrics wrong a couple of times, but I don’t care.)
There are numerous touches in the song that mean that it’s no surprise that I’d be totally sucked in: the descending chords at the start (especially when done on the piano), lyrics about holding hands – I don’t know why that always gets to me, but it does – and the importance of harmony vocals. It’s a song that’s been covered a ridiculous number of times, moreso as the Zombies’ cultural cache (deservedly) grows, but almost every version brings a smile to my lips no matter how terrible.
Here’s the original version, complete with the awesome horn arrangement that’s missing from a lot of stereo mixes of the album (including the “official” album as it’s available today, I think). This is more gentle, more graceful than the Menswear version, and likely more beatutiful:
Here’s hoping that this will be our year. After all, if it is, it has taken a long to come.