"ABC" by the Jackson 5

Song 3:

“ABC” by The Jackson 5

Peak: 1

Year: 1970

Year end position: 15

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/13

Chronological Songs by Artist: 2/13

Video?: No

Wikipedia?:  Yes:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(The_Jackson_5_song)

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://genius.com/The-jacksons-abc-lyrics

So, we are 3 days into the blog, and we finally reached our first #1 song.  About 14% of all the songs that hit the top 20 wind up hitting #1, so this will be the first of many #1 songs we profile on this blog.  There are a lot of things to unpack about this song, so let’s get to it.

First off, you may be wondering about the convention I am using regarding song titles that aren’t actually words.  You could make a case that “ABC” is more correctly “A B C” with spaces between the letters, causing this to be alphabetically first.  I understand that argument, but I made an executive decision to not go that route.  I came to that decision because I think it’s more interesting of a play list when you call it all one word.  I did the same thing with songs that are initials (like “O.P.P., I have as “OPP”).  I just didn’t want the first few songs of each new letter to be initials, as it would be that way for every letter.  This way they are buried in the playlist at different intervals.  We’ll have enough bunching of similar titles as it is, so I didn’t want to add to that if I could help it.

Second, this is the first song in the blog that is one word.  Not only is it one word, it also is a 3-letter word.  That got me thinking about single-word titles on the charts.  As of right now, this is the first of 60 one-word titled songs that begin with the letter “A” we will get to.  It also happens to be the shortest of that list.  It is, in fact, the shortest song title that begins with the letter “A” in the whole blog.  I was curious about the number of one-word titles on the charts, as it seems like there are more recently than I remember as a kid.  Sure enough, my hunch was right.  Below is a graph of that phenomenon:

You can see that “ABC” was kind of at a low point in regards to the percent of one-word titles on the charts, and you can see the steady, consistent rise over the years.  I would like to say this is because of short attention spans, but I really have no data to back any of this up.  I just think it’s an interesting piece of data.  I made another chart based on the total length of song titles:

The Y-axis is the number of characters in the title of each song.  You can see the steady downward trend of naming conventions over time.  Again, “ABC” sticks out on this graph.  The average song title in 1970 was 18.43 characters long.  There have only been 2 years with longer titles since.  Again, I’m not sure what causes something like this to occur, but it a persistent trend.  The only conclusion I can draw is that song titles are increasingly becoming shorter and more prominently one-word.  I guess prepositional phrases and clauses aren’t in vogue any more.  That, or James Brown stopped naming songs (as we will see later).

Another thing to mention, as this is the first time it has come up, is that I have the Jackson 5 (as opposed to “The Jacksons” – I have them separate) in my Hall of Fame.  My criteria for inclusion to the Hall of Fame is pretty simple:  If you’ve managed to get 10 songs into the top 20 over the course of your career, you’re in.  As you may have seen above, the Jackson 5 had 13 such songs.  If you look at their career, the Jackson 5 had a relatively short lifespan in turns of churning out top 20 hits.  They started in 1969 and stopped in 1975, for a span of only 6 years.  Part of the reason for that was that Jackson 5 changed their lineup and became “The Jacksons”.  As a point of reference, that is comparable to Michael Bolton from 1987-1993.  The main difference between those 2 is that the Jackson 5 had a lot more chart success.  Of the 162 members of the HOF, they are currently 65^th in average chart position, with the average chart position of their top 20 hits at 7.85.  Michael Bolton, for reference is currently 99^th with 8.85 average chart position.  They had 7 songs wind up in the top 2 vs. only 2 from Michael Bolton.

This song is possibly the most beloved of the Jackson 5 songs that we will get to.  I think it might be my favorite.  There’s something infectious about it.  It’s just fun.  I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like “ABC”.  Digging a little into the history of this song, I learned that this song is essentially an extended version of “I Want You Back”.  The tune of this song is essentially the chorus of “I Want You Back”.  That was by design by Motown records.  That is somewhat brilliant.  If you have a song that people like, just mix it up a little bit and re-release it as a different song.  I’m not sure if I’d have that same opinion if I didn’t like both songs, but I do, so I’m giving that technique some slack.  There are other acts where I wouldn’t be so charitable.

The lyrics of the song are pretty simple.  There’s a line in there that pretty much sums up the entire song.  It’s “Sing a simple melody”.  That is exactly what the Jackson 5 is doing with this song.  The lyrics aren’t particularly deep.  The song is about how easy it is to fall in love, especially if you fall in love with the singer.  Rumor has it that one of the songwriters (and the piano player on the song) was a former teacher, so that was where the theme came from.

I want to make sure that I give proper recognition to the rest of the Jackson 5.  Michael Jackson obviously is the lead singer on the song, but the song kind of works because of the other singers.  They provide a little counterpoint to Michael, which gives the song some added depth.  I think that Jermaine, Marlon, Tito and Jackie get a little short shrift when people mention the Jackson 5. 

Maybe my favorite part of the song is the bridge where Michael screams out “Sit down girl / I think I love ya’ / No. Get up girl / Show me what you can do”.  Those directions seem confusing to me when you read them as lyrics, but they totally work in the song.  I give credit to the infectiousness of the song that that part doesn’t seem strange.

This song came around long before the advent of the music video, but you can find a version of them singing this song on American Bandstand that is pretty entertaining.  It’s obviously lip syched, and I’m not sure the people are even playing instruments, but it’s still a fun watch.  I particularly like the teal fringe and Jermaine’s dancing off to the side.  The outfits make it look like they would easily fit into an episode of Scooby Doo.

It’s pretty fair to say that of the 3 songs I’ve reviewed so far, this is easily my favorite.  It’s almost impossible to listen to and not feel good.  If I was at a standing desk writing this, it would be really hard to not move around a little bit, and that’s the mark of a good song.