Sherry

September–October 1962

Now, I know that the Four Seasons are one of the most loved musical groups from this time period, but I've got to be honest, right up front: I find Frankie Valli's singing voice to be shrill, silly, and frankly annoying. There have been lots of songs I've covered by artists with enduring reputations, where I totally get the appeal—Elvis's charm is contagious, the layered sounds of Motown can be marvelous, and hey, I can even dig Neil Sedaka—but this is where I draw the line.



I guess some things just can't cross the generational divide. It's not like the Four Seasons were some flash in the pan group, either—"Sherry" is merely the first of five #1 hits the group recorded, and there are two more from Valli's solo career. Not having been alive in 1962, it's impossible for me to have a true sense of what this music sounded like to people at the time, but there must be some way to explain this kind of massive appeal. Certainly they have a unique, easily recognizable sound, due mostly to the lead vocals. Perhaps it's the boldness with which Valli lunges into this performance, flipping in and out of falsetto, giving it everything he's got, injecting it with a charming youth energy. At any rate, you couldn't accuse this group of sounding like anybody else. Whatever it was, people got it.

Certain kinds of music are more generationally specific than others, I think. Radiohead's album Kid A, widely regarded as a masterpiece of the millennial age, probably has limited appeal to the folks that made the Four Seasons popular (and who knows how the children of the future will hear it?). Its cold, fearful depiction of the brave new world of the computer age is something that is pretty damn specific to people in my demographic or thereabouts, who grew up experiencing the emergence of personal computers and the Internet firsthand, during our formative years. When Kid A is as old as "Sherry" is now, people might look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

I guess what it comes down to is that music sounds different to different people, and that's that. A great many cultural and societal factors go into how someone perceives a given piece of music, and I'll never be able to hear the Four Seasons from the frame of the early 60s zeitgeist. I can only relate my totally subjective experience.

B-