Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba
Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba
(1:44-2:02)

Much as this lyric should perhaps more rightly have formed part of the Cypriot Eurovision Song Contest entry for 1958, this 18-second-long joyous invocation of the unbridled joy of head-over-heels-in-love-ness provides the first of our Sublime Moments In Pop.

Co-written by songwriting team Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon, Happy Together was turned down by various bands and singers before The Turtles started playing it as part of their live set.  Arranged by bassist Chip Douglas, the 1967 studio recording builds from a gentle, almost apologetic, opening guitar riff (0:00-0:07) to tell the age-old story of unrequited yearning.

Should our protagonist pick up the phone and call the girl he loves?  “If I should call you up, invest a dime,” accompanied by a low-in-the-mix piano (the only solo piano in the song, a lovely touch) tinkling to mimic the sound of a phone ringing (0:27-0:28).

The familiar chorus – “I can’t see me loving nobody but you for all my life/ When you’re with me, baby, the skies will be blue for all my life!” – is an overblown cacophony of trumpets, trombones, tubas, percussion and layer upon layer of vocals that arguably captures the giddy exuberance of youthful love better than any other pop record.

The arrangement and production of this record is so perfect that, in the second repeat of the verse, there’s even an oboe weaving a sublime pattern (1:28-1:44) beneath the vocals before the crescendo into the irresistible confection of the ba-ba-ba rendition of the chorus that makes this record one of the few genuine contenders for The Perfect Three-Minute Pop Song (2 minutes 52 seconds from start to finish).

The pay-off (too often dismissed as jokey frippery) – “How is the weather?” (2:21-2:22) – is actually our hero bottling the task at hand, admitting that even if he does invest his dime he won’t be able to tell his girl how he feels.  Keith West had his Excerpt From A Teenage Opera; Happy Together is the full Monty.

It would be wrong to dismiss the song as just another piece of the bubblegum fluff in the belly-button of the Summer of Love, for this is one of the songs that pre-dated and influenced the Summer of ’67: the single was recorded in March 1967, just a couple of weeks after the release of Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane heralded the new vibe – and released a month later.  Perhaps it’s not cutting edge, but neither is it Scott Mackenzie’s San Francisco.

It is only fitting that it should take something special to knock Penny Lane from the top of the Billboard Hot 100: Happy Together was just that special (and was itself replaced after three weeks by something stupid called Somethin’ Stupid).  While the band produced a handful of hits Stateside either side of Happy Together, nothing would – or could – ever top this, their crowning achievement.

True to form, the British record-buying public proved their cluelessness by helping the single limp to only number 12 for two weeks while the chronic Somethin’ Stupid and crime against humanity Puppet On A String sat at number one; The Turtles’ follow-up hits She’d Rather Be With Me and Elenore both made the British Top 10.

Within three years of releasing Happy Together, The Turtles were no more but the band’s finest moment took on a life of its own and has been used in countless movies, TV programmes and – spit – advertisements for products as diverse as cars, chewing gum and electricity, in the process deservedly becoming the 44th most broadcast record of the 20th century in the USA.