5 April 1969
Remember those footballer questionnaires in Shoot! and Match magazines? “Favourite meal: Steak and chips. Most desirable date: The missus!” Anyway, I remember in one of them the ’90s Man United winger Lee Sharpe was asked which song he hated most and, instead of a noted novelty irritant like ‘The Birdie Song’ or a pop punchbag like ‘I Should Be So Lucky’, he picked ‘Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?’ As a ’90s kid I already knew this ’60s hit, such was its (a) infamy and (b) persistence, even into the ’90s, and I already hated it. Much in the way a hotel waitress singing along to ‘Give It Up’ was my childhood realisation that adults like pop music too, Sharpe’s Q&A response was the first time I was aware of an adult hating the same well-known track as I did.
I still hate it, of course. The folk-pop ballad of a rejected man sneering at a self-made woman from humble Neapolitan beginnings that her roots are showing, ‘Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?’ is sexist, smug, crass, leery, clichéd, maudlin, unfunny and naff, like Chris De Burgh trying to adapt an Elena Ferrante novel. The “my lovely” in particular makes my skin crawl. Plus there’s Sarstedt’s Inspector Clouseau accent, which for some would be an incitement to put a bem in his rhem. If you like this song, then even former Sky Sports sexist Andy Gray with his famous CD collection (“People say footballers have terrible taste in music but I would dispute that. In the car at the moment I’ve got The Corrs, Cher, Phil Collins, Shania Twain and Rod Stewart”) can look down on you.
