Folk singer/songwriter Melanie Safka, best known as simply Melanie, has died at the age of 76. While no Joni Mitchell, she was beginning to have a following with people who liked somewhat folky introspective music in the late 60s/early 70s and scored a Top 10 hit with “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” in collaboration with the Edwin Hawkins Singers in 1970, a song about her impressions of performing at Woodstock. It was a great single and I vividly remember how it simply barreled out of your AM radio back in the day.
Then, disaster. She recorded a silly little song called “Brand New Key.” The story goes that it was just going to be an album cut, but her record company put it out as a single, and it became a huge hit. She lost all credibility as an up-and-coming singer/songwriter. Her childlike voice didn’t help. In her words, “it became the bane of my existence” and totally derailed her career.
She deserved better. At the time of her death, she was working on an album of cover songs. Farewell, Melanie.
I found her songs very evocative, and listened to her “greatest hits” album frequently, especially when i was in college. “Lay down (candles in the rain)” was my favorite.
Don’t know where you saw that but The Combine Harvester is a parody version of brand new key. I never heard the original versions mentioned in the link but there was a version by the Ukrainian/Canadian comedian Metro.
If you’ve never heard of Metro that just means you’re not a 60 year old Western Canadian.
And sometimes an artist just likes to be vague about the songs meaning in order for people to come up with their own interpretations and keep a controversy going. Consider the line “Don’t go to fast, but I go pretty far”. That and some people thought that key meant ki as in kilo of drugs, definitely not about that if that’s the meaning you are referring to. I have been listening to it since it came out and never once thought it was just about roller skating. It’s about a young girls attraction to boy.
That’s why I said “the story goes…” because it was on her own record label (Neighborhood) and presumably she and her husband had control over how her recordings would be released, as album cuts or singles. I’ve never seen a definitive answer. Perhaps the distribution company had a say in it, or perhaps it was her own decision which she later came to regret.
Either way, that cute little song getting played over and over on Top 40 radio blew any cred she might have built up as a serious artist. There was a lot of musical snobbery back in those days.
I was a big fan…and honestly thought she had died years ago. I remember posting a song and mentioning how I wish I could have seen her live before she passed and a friend responded “She’s still alive…and is playing a show not far from me.” Floored me.
I think I saw her on TV one time, some variety show in the mid '70s. She was performing a song called “Hurricane,” replete with some wind effects, IIRC. But I remember “Brand New Key” being all over the radio at one time.
and skates now shelved.
