Lynn Anderson – ‘Rose Garden’

27 March 1971

Lynn Anderson is not Canadian. This information is for any other ’80s kids like me who first encountered her singing ‘Rose Garden’ as a sample on ‘I Beg Your Pardon’ by dour Canuck electro act Kon Kan, a sort of New-foundland Order. Their name comes from the regulation that music radio stations in Canada play a set amount of Canadian content. My small-child brain therefore assumed Kon Kan were patriotically repping their native tunes and that Lynn Anderson was one of those ’70s Canadian cabaret-country singers like Anne Murray. In fact, she was American.

Passports duly checked, what about ‘Rose Garden’ itself? Well, the bit Kon Kan sampled was its pre-chorus of “Smile for a while and let’s be jolly / Love shouldn’t be so melancholy / Come along and share the good times while we can” – chipper and cheesy in form and content as ironic (in a later ’90s Canadian usage of the term) contrast to Kon Kan’s sombre Sumner-ism. The rest of the song is just as jaunty but with ’70s bubblegum pop production and achingly trite lyrics. “You don’t find roses growin’ on stalks of clover” is inane even to a serial houseplant-killer like me, while “You better look before you leap, still waters run deep” is so basic and naff it could almost be from that last Dua Lipa album. ‘Rose Garden’ clips along at a pleasant trot with a catchy tune, but it’s schmaltzy ’70s TV light-entertainment content: maybe not Canadian maple syrup, but certainly good ol’ American cornball.

Next time: You won’t BELIEVE which country Switzerland’s French-speaking 1988 Eurovision winner Celine Dion is REALLY from!