Johnny Angel

April 1962

How unfortunate that since my return to this project, several songs in a row have been so mediocre. It makes for a rather limp restart, but rules are rules, and I'm doing the songs in order. The next one is by Shelley Fabares (rhymes with "cabaret"), another lame one-hit wonder.



One interesting thing to note about these songs is the demographic groups that were responsible for pushing them to the top. Someone like Connie Francis probably appealed to younger people, but also had a strong popularity among the adult age groups—I think it was this breadth of target audience that allowed her to generate such a massive number of hits. Think of the most successful acts of the recording era, the likes of Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna, Michael Jackson. All of them had an appeal that attracted teenagers and adults alike. (Notably, the over-40 section of the population, although a huge demographic group, is largely not a concern of the artists that I am covering.)

Shelley Fabares, on the other hand, had a much more limited appeal—"Johnny Angel" is clearly designed for teenyboppers only. The song's lyrics express a sentiment that only a middle or high schooler could possibly sympathize with: "Johnny Angel, how I love him, he's got something that I can't resist / But he doesn't even know that I exist." Few mature people would identify with the idea of falling in love with someone you don't even know, but this is of course a huge phenomenon among the newly pubescent—who didn't have a crush or two in their younger years?

And indeed, the singer herself was only 18 when this song was popular. Probably a little past the age of most of her fans, but closer than most. But anyway, it's not like teenyboppers are some obscure, niche group. They were, and are, an enormous and influential section of the consumer base of popular music, for better or for worse. They were able to get Shelley Fabares to the top of the chart, but they couldn't keep her there. Of her few other attempts, the only one that even made a blip on the radar was a sequel to "Johnny Angel," released a few months later, called "Johnny Loves Me." Johnny may have finally loved her, but her fans gave her up.

D+