"Terry" is a song, written in 1964, by a British pop singer called Twinkle. The track is about the death of a young man (called Terry), killed in a motorcycling accident. It reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart in December 1964, spending fifteen weeks on the chart.[1] The track also reached #5 on the Canadian charts, spending 4 weeks in the top 40 in February of 1965. It did not chart in the US. The follow-up UK hit, proving Twinkle was not a one-hit wonder in her home country, was called "Golden Lights" - a track incongrously covered by The Smiths. Morrissey was a big fan of Twinkle's work.
Critique
All Music Guide states - "Terry" itself is magnificent -- Phil Spector meets The Shangri-Las on a rain-slicked English back-road. Banned by both the BBC and British TV's top pop show, Ready Steady Go, on the grounds of bad taste, it made the UK Top Five without touching the brakes and should have set up Twinkle for never-ending fame. And it might have -- one can only imagine what would have happened had her early career been handled by Andrew Loog Oldham, for example, as opposed to a last-gasp hurrah. For Twinkle's own team was considerably less well-versed in her requirements, while she herself swiftly lost patience with the star machine cranking noisily around her. The shimmering "Golden Lights," the follow-up single, was a barely disguised assault on the ease with which fame changes people, written from the point of view of a faithful girl spurned by her newly glittering boyfriend. By 1966, Twinkle had retired from the music industry; she was just 17. In the great scheme of things, Twinkle was little more than a blip on the British pop scene of the mid-'60s -- how many other artists, after all, scored just one career-defining hit, only to discover they either didn't have, or didn't want, a career in the first place? Twinkle, however, deserves more. She wrote her own songs, she styled her own act, and she had a voice that puts one in mind of the late Kirsty MacColl -- yes, it really was that good.
References
- ^ Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums, 19th, London: Guinness World Records Limited, p. 570. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
