Music Appreciation
Related: About this forumProfessorGAC
(65,160 posts)As someone who wore out the first 4 albums, that hit was a disappointment.
Off that album, I think much better songs were:
New York Connection
Wig-Wam Bam
Hell Raiser
Block Buster!
Spotlight
But, the band & the producers made some coin off Willy, so who cares what I think?!?
highplainsdem
(49,032 posts)I decided to share it.
If we ever need complete agreement on music here, very little (if anything at all) will get posted.
ProfessorGAC
(65,160 posts)I was a huge fan of the band & thought other songs on that album would have made for a stronger single.
That said, although I like the song, Fox On The Run was the weakest song (for me) on Desolation Boulevard. But, it was a big hit, too.
highplainsdem
(49,032 posts)that I don't like, that I don't think is worth listening to. This song deserved to be a hit.
highplainsdem
(49,032 posts)Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Willy_(song)
In a retrospective review of glitter rock, Bomp! noted that although rock music journalists almost uniformly "loathed it", the song was a huge commercial success and "helped launch the essential glitter rock formula sound".[8]
"Little Willy" was used extensively in the pilot of the television series Life on Mars.
AllMusic: https://www.allmusic.com/song/little-willy-mt0002312076
It's pop-rock. It's bubblegum. But that was often an element of glam rock -- think of T.Rex.
It was very good pop-rock, though. An earworm. And as silly and superficial as it is, I think it's held up over the years much better than some of the more pretentious music of the time.
From Songfacts: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/sweet/little-willy
"Little Willy" was Sweet's biggest US hit, peaking the charts at #3 when it was re-released in 1973. It was a non-album single, but went gold in the US and UK all by itself anyway. Critics in the UK dismissed the song as "bubblegum" and referred to the lyrics as "nursery porn." Sweet wanted to shed their bubblegum/ glam-rock image and become more hardcore, so they later turned to writing their own songs.
Putting this song together, Chinn and Chapman used a pounding drum beat popularized by Slade and producer Mike Leander. They mixed in the riff from the Who song "I Can't Explain," and added the exceptionally catchy chorus, which dug into your ear and wouldn't let go. The song didn't tell any kind of story - just that Willy won't go home - but listeners didn't care and with Glam Rock, the lyrics weren't supposed to make sense anyway.