7 June 1963
To illustrate how deadening Cliff Richard is to any song in his vicinity, here we have the benefit of comparison. Lieber & Stoller’s ‘Lucky Lips’ was originally a 1957 hit for the ’50s queen of US R&B, Ruth Brown. Her rich, swaggering voice and the track’s purring bass sax make great hay with the song’s playful, hip-swinging paean to the intangible magic and irrepressible agency of raw sex appeal. It’s a smashing record.
Cliff, of course, by his mere presence scours away all this song’s sex appeal with an almost itemised line-by-line thoroughness. His repositioning of it from girl to guy reduces ‘Lucky Lips’ to a skiffly ’50s white-bread rock n’ roll ditty about a winsome mother’s boy – in fact, a lot like ‘Bachelor Boy’. Cliff really is dreadful: we’ve found our ’60s Shakin’ Stevens, but worse.
