10 July 1971
Reluctant as I am to mull on the lyrics of any ’70s bubblegum pop hit or destroy your enjoyment of same, ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ is not about a wee bird in a nest. It really is about a small child called Don—that second line is “little baby Don”—that’s abandoned by its parents, or perhaps even orphaned. Any feather-bedded interpretation is purely because the momma, a human, seems to have been singing the birdsong-like “chirpy chirpy cheep cheep”: there’s no mention of birds or flying. This all dawned on me in excruciating circumstances; the song was playing on the radio in the car as we drove home from our paternal grandmother’s funeral. My father’s name is Donal. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Excruciating” is a convenient word to describe ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ itself. However, it needn’t have been so. The drum intro and breakdown are cool, the tune is weapons-grade catchy, the handclaps and stomping beat are glam, and the casual radio listener won’t catch the surprising bleakness of its whimsical lyrics. Also, the soul-pop US cover by Mac and Katie Kissoon and the French adaptation ‘Un Africain à Paris’ both show the potential here for a lighter touch to make this cool, breezy and even likeable.
Alas, Middle Of The Road’s signature track quickly turns as rancid as chip fat. Was the vocal pitch-shifted or vari-sped in production? I find it hard to believe such a piercing, nagging, chippy warble is the natural singing style of anyone not called Cilla Black. The dreaded key change; the stifling production; the gaseous James Last-style choral backing effect; the stilted tour-guide exhortations to sing along before every stomach-sinking repetition of the chorus: it’s a tough and long three minutes of lacquered low-grade schlager whose natural home was the gimmick-friendly cabaret-style TV light entertainment shows of ’70s Europe. That said, a group calling itself Middle Of The Road and singing a song called ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ probably didn’t care what you or I think. So, let’s not dwell any further on it.
