25 September 1970
Here’s our first number one single from Canada. This being the dawn of a decade featuring real-life Osmonds and fictional Partridges, you’d assume The Poppy Family were indeed a household as advertised. In fact, they were mostly singer Susan Jacks and her husband Terry, the latter soon of ‘Seasons In The Sun’ infamy, plus two other guys who weren’t Jackses.
I don’t know ‘Which Way You Goin’, Billy?’ so, as per the Irish Number Ones user manual, I shall listen to this LIVE for the first time as I write this. My instinctive goodwill towards Canada and the adjective ‘poppy’—as distinct to the noun—is tempered by the possibility that I’m about to hear some twee ’70s bubblegum schlock involving Terry Jacks. Also, Bryan Adams is from Canada, so they’re not always sending us their good stuff. All I’m saying is Susan and the two non-Jacks may need to be bringing ‘Call Me Maybe’ levels of Canuck pop A-game to tip the balance and sell me this.
[One listen later]
Aha! I actually know that chorus! Which I like! Along with other stuff in ‘Which Way You Goin’, Billy?’ too! My giddy showering of exclamations is because I’m happily surprised. Susan Jacks’ dreamy voice, similar to the languid magic-hour light of Nancy Sinatra’s, is the moneymaker here. Sensibly, the spacious production and light-touch arrangement don’t crowd her; I’m always a fan of those plangent late-’60s pop basslines. And that chorus is genuinely lovely. Debit entries here are the schmaltz accrual of those repeated Billys and the dreaded climactic key change. Unusually for the first-time-listen songs I normally encounter here, I’m just about to listen to ‘Which Way You Goin’, Billy?’ again – well, as far as the key change at any rate.
