25 March 1967
In Ireland the deed was done by Petula Clark’s ‘This Is My Song’, but in the UK the single that kept The Beatles’ double-A-sided ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ / ‘Penny Lane’ off the number one spot was this. Naturally, ‘Release Me’ also eventually topped the charts (with The Beatles at no. 3, still behind a Petula now down to no. 2) in Ireland – and why wouldn’t it? This is a maudlin 50s-style country-pop ballad about tearjerking romantic melodrama: in other words, it’s showband, baby! As with Ken Dodd’s ‘Tears’, turns out the Brits were at it too!
Its notoriety as the UK pop charts’ greatest perceived injustice aside, does ‘Release Me’ have any redeeming features? I wouldn’t go that far—though there’s always some other guy with a pure-pop-masterpiece revisionist piece in their drafts folder about the unlikeliest thing—but it’s adequately crooned by Engelbert and the orchestration is lush. Otherwise, the ulcer-bursting climactic key change is confirmation that ‘Release Me’ is emotionally manipulative schlock. Also, Engelbert has already taken the liberty of kissing someone else’s lips (warm) as a compare-contrast exercise, so I wouldn’t be too hard on his party-of-the-second-part (cold, or so he says) for making him sweat it out on hearing this. Penny dreadful.
