It's Only Make Believe

November 1958

Conway Twitty, who just might have the stupidest name in all of history, was apparently an extremely successful recording artist, with forty (!) #1 singles on the country charts, which was a record until 2006. However, only this song topped the overall Billboard chart, with a Grover Cleveland-esque run of two nonconsecutive week-long terms.

You may have noticed that Mr. Twitty really, really sounds like Elvis. Of course, in the late 50s there was no shortage of little aspiring Elvises all across this great country, but this song made me do a double take. The similarity is so striking that it is his defining feature. The song itself is fine - a pretty clever little tune that I wouldn't mind hearing from time to time, but you could fool 99 out of 100 people into thinking it was the King crooning those lyrics instead of Sir Twitty.

It's an inevitability of popular music that if somebody is insanely successful, they will be copied. Thinking back on the music that was popular when I was growing up - well, who remembers the band Bush? It's funny because it never occurred to me when I was 13 years old, but I realized later that the singer sounds inexcusably like Kurt Cobain. It's more than wearing your influences on your sleeve - it's completely surrendering to them, living and breathing them. It becomes almost a tribute act. I imagine it's not easy handling your success when you pretty much owe it all to one person you haven't ever met (except, of course, through his records).

In college, me and a few friends spent a semester as a Ween tribute band, playing only covers of their songs. It was a lot of fun, and I was surprised at the generally warm reception we got, but after you do that for a while, you kinda start to wish you had written those songs. Of course, there's a huge difference between something you do for fun in college, and something you devote your life to. It's probably unfair for me to extrapolate my experiences onto Professor Twitty's, but I would be surprised if he didn't spend a sleepless night or two fantasizing about being Elvis. Probably a lot more than one or two. Judging from his singing voice, he was damn near obsessed.

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