15 April 1967
Yes, that’s the billing on the record: full names separately, with Nancy first. In 1967 this was probably a nod to the belief that the new pop music was sweeping the old pop (literally, in the case of Nancy’s old pop Frank) into irrelevancy. Okay, turns out Frank Sinatra didn’t disappear into obscurity, and for the rest of the 20th century his legacy was secure. However, a-quarter-ways into the 21st century, is it Nancy Sinatra who’s more culturally relevant and resonant now? Obviously there are people still listening to Frank Sinatra today, and Michael Bublé—like a Nathan Carter weaned on the Rat Pack instead of country & Irish—ploughs that derivative furrow right down to the aquifer with considerable financial success. Still, Frank and his Great American Songbook idiom feel like a historical artefact trapped in amber, while Nancy’s thrilling ’60s catalogue still feels modern and vibrant. On a less scientific note, the Sinatra family member I’m more likely to listen to right now is Nancy. So, while to a certain vintage that billing may seem odd, it captured its present-day mood and (I’d argue) also looked into the future.
That’s all far too much thinking for ‘Somethin’ Stupid’, essentially a whimsical romantic ditty. Yes, the father-daughter casting is fundamentally ick, though hearing Serge and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s infamous ’80s duet ‘Lemon Incest’ does wonders for one’s sense of perspective here. But the verses, especially with the breezy acoustic guitar picking, have a sunny lightness, and the whirling pre-chorus lyric of “The time is right / your perfume fills my head / the stars get red / and oh, the night’s so blue” is genuinely lovely. What scuttles ‘Somethin’ Stupid’, though, isn’t the father-daughter duet but the fact that it’s not a song for a duet in the first place. Of course, why can’t Frank Sinatra also be wearing perfume, and what’s his preferred scent? But you have two fabulous pop voices boiled down to tracking each other in a monotonous mumble, with Nancy getting the worse deal. With the two singers effectively marking each other out of the game, the lingering aftertaste is the corny, cooing chorus that foregrounds Frank’s ’60s and ’70s line of self-parodic cabaret schmaltz.
All that being said, the Sinatra family edition is still light years better than the stunt-casting Bublé-esque iteration of another dreadful recidivist cosplayer, Robbie Williams, for whom the phrase “somethin’ stupid” is a brand value. It’s all relative.
