The Archies

Don Kirshner had already put together a television band before, and it had gone badly.

The Monkees, whom he had assembled for a series, rebelled. They wanted to play their own instruments, choose their material, decide. And since they were people, they could demand it. Kirshner ended up out of the project.

His answer was impeccable, in the cold sense of the word: the next band would be a cartoon.

A cartoon character demands nothing. It does not argue about the repertoire, does not ask for a bigger cut and does not get tired of the tour, because there is no tour.

The ones who were actually there

"The Archie Show" premiered in 1968, based on some comics about small-town teenagers. In the series, the characters had a band.

The songs were recorded by session musicians nobody ever saw. The lead voice was Ron Dante's and the female voice Toni Wine's.

"Sugar, Sugar" came out in 1969 and was written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim. Barry produced it, not Kirshner —worth making clear, because the credit tends to drift on its own towards the man who appears in the photographs.

It was number one in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and closed the year as the number one song of 1969 in Billboard's annual tally. Ahead of everything recorded that year.

Along the way it left Creedence Clearwater Revival in second place with "Green River", one of the five second places Creedence collected without ever reaching the top.

First, no

The easy article says they were the first cartoon characters to reach number one. They were not.

Alvin and the Chipmunks had done it in 1958, eleven years earlier, with their Christmas song. They too were characters, they too were sung by a man in a studio, they too sold millions.

What The Archies were was the proof at industrial scale. Alvin was a novelty; "Sugar, Sugar" was the best-selling song of an entire year.

What that taught

The industry took note of something it has not forgotten since: the face and the voice can travel separately, and the audience almost never asks.

That is where a line begins that runs across decades. Boney M., where the male voice on the record was not that of the man dancing out front. Milli Vanilli, where it was found out and ended in scandal. And Gorillaz, where Damon Albarn did the same thing in reverse: he drew the band on purpose, in plain sight, and turned the trick into the work.

The Archies did not invent that idea. They made it profitable.

What to remember

The Archies are proof that sometimes what the industry wants is not an artist, but a song with nobody to claim it.

Put on "Sugar, Sugar" and you will hear perfect bubblegum pop: three minutes designed to stick, which worked so well that they were the most listened-to thing of all 1969.

And bear in mind how it came to exist. A producer who had been argued with by musicians of flesh and blood decided to work with some who could not do it.

Remember it like this: the number one song of the year was sung by a guy called Ron Dante, and for a long time almost nobody knew his name.

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Sources

The Archies, fictional band created for the animated television series "The Archie Show", premiered in 1968 and based on the Archie comics. The project was conceived by the producer Don Kirshner after his break with The Monkees, a group also created for television whose members demanded artistic control over their repertoire. The songs were recorded by session musicians: the lead vocal was Ron Dante's and the female vocal Toni Wine's. "Sugar, Sugar" (1969) was written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, and produced by Jeff Barry; it reached number one in the United States and the United Kingdom and topped Billboard's annual tally as the number one song of 1969. That number one kept "Green River", by Creedence Clearwater Revival, in second place. They were not the first animated characters to top the American chart: Alvin and the Chipmunks had managed it in 1958 with "The Chipmunk Song". The model of separating the public image from the musicians who record anticipated later cases such as Boney M., Milli Vanilli and Gorillaz. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Boney M., Milli Vanilli, Gorillaz and Damon Albarn have their own profiles in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Wikipedia, Britannica and other coverage.