Bobby Goldsboro – ‘Honey’

15 June 1968

For years I thought ‘Honey’ was meant to be a comedy song. This was because I first heard it as performed by a theatrical troupe who, for reasons not clear to us, played at our secondary school one random midweek morning. The singer threw to us with gurning reaction faces at certain lines—looking up in terror at seeing how big the tree had grown—and tagged some Gay Byrne catchphrases on to the “late late show” reference, all as prompts for us to laugh. Alas for him, a hallful of teenagers couldn’t cringe and laugh at the same time.

I really should be laughing at whoever bought or liked this twee, simpering, condescending, hypermaudlin schlock. Unfortunately, ‘Honey’ is a foretaste of the death-ballad sub-genre of dreadful bubblegum pop which will regularly top our charts for the following decade, all of which lie ahead here as Irish Number Ones moves from the gauche ’60s into the kitsch ’70s. The joke’s on me.