The DNA of Frozen Orange Juice

 

As someone who writes songs as a hobby, I’ve always been interested in what one might call the DNA of pop music: what it is that makes certain songs appealing, others annoying. Perhaps the best exponent of this type of pop song analysis is record producer and YouTuber Rick Beato, whose videos explain, in musical terms, exactly why songs by artists like the Beatles sound the way they do. Songwriting will almost certainly never be reduced to an exact science, and it will be a black day for the music industry if it ever is. Artificial Intelligence thinks it can write songs, but all it really does is act as a kind of food processor, mixing ingredients from other sources and ending up with a kind of generic slop. Songwriters rely on instinct and inspiration, two qualities which AI will never achieve if it lasts a thousand years.

With a little musical knowledge and insight, it is, nevertheless, possible to isolate elements in specific songs that add to their character and appeal, and I’ve just recently done this with Peter Sarstedt’s 1969 chart hit ‘Frozen Orange Juice’. Why that particular song? Well, a track I was working on put me in mind of it. It was a song I’d written a long time ago and had only just got round to recording. I’d never noticed any similarity between this song and ‘Frozen Orange Juice’, but when I was listening to the playback I was reminded of it. Was it the melody, the chords? This all set me to thinking about the musical components of ‘Frozen Orange Juice’, and wondering exactly what it was about the song that made it special.

‘Frozen Orange Juice’ has a very simple structure: there is no verse/chorus as such, just two 8-bar sections. The first eight bars state the main melody, in the home key of F major: ‘I’ll buy you one more frozen orange juice/ on this fantastic day’. The second eight bars modulate to B flat major: ‘And if you feel you wanna run down a ravine…’ This second section occurs again as the refrain ‘you rescue me, I’ll rescue you’. There are three verses, a la-la instrumental verse and three bridge sections. That’s all there is to it.

The arrangement adds interest and variety, with strings and woodwind restating the main theme, and a pedal steel guitar adding some soaring, sliding notes. The lyrics are happily optimistic, but there’s also a hint of sadness, of parting, as in the last verse the narrator states ‘I’ll be on my way’. It’s this subtle melancholy that is the key to the song’s appeal, and it all hinges on one specific note in the melody that occurs on the first syllable of ‘frozen’. It’s a fourth above the home key of F major, and fourths are a funny thing in music. AI (dare I admit it) says that the perfect fourth ‘evokes a sense of reaching or longing’, which is exactly what Sarstedt is aiming for in his composition. The narrator knows very well that ‘this fantastic day’ won’t last forever and that by tomorrow morning it will be simply a happy memory.

The main melody climbs to the fourth and then backs down again, just like the characters in the song walking ‘the sunny hills of Madrid’. Sarstedt only hits one higher note in the whole song, the high B flat of ‘if you wanna run’… and from this musical high point, the melody again does exactly what the lyrics describe, and runs downhill. If instead of stopping at the fourth, the melody had risen to the fifth note of the scale, or higher, the sense of longing would have been diminished. In the final verse, the melody hits the fourth again when the lyrics reach ‘on my way’, again reinforcing the underlying sadness.

It doesn’t really matter whether Sarstedt did all this by design or instinct (I suspect the latter). It’s that ‘yearning’ fourth that adds the sense of happy/sadness that I think he was aiming for. The song sounds joyously optimistic, but there’s also the tug of nostalgia for good times past. It’s interesting to note some of the comments posted on one of the YouTube uploads of the track: ‘a sound of sunshine, freedom and joy’; ‘smiles all round’; ‘reminds me of long hot summers’. For me, it has always evoked the brilliant blue sky of a summer day, seen from my parents’ back garden, and, simultaneously, the landscape described in the lyrics. It’s a song of bright blue and brilliant yellow, and the key of F major conveys the warmth of the sunny hills around Madrid.

‘Frozen Orange Juice’ spent nine weeks in the UK charts, entering at number 50 on 10 June 1969, and making its last appearance at number 30 on the week of 2 August. Its highest position was number 10, for one week on 7 July – perfect timing, for the release coincided with a spell of warm sunny weather which almost certainly helped it up the charts.

Curiously, though, it was quite unlike Sarstedt’s huge hit of earlier the same year, ‘Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)’, which had reached number one with its folk club sound, Parisian accordion and enigmatic lyrics. ‘Frozen Orange Juice’ by contrast, sounds more like a pop record, with its full band and orchestration. Production was by Ray Singer, with an arrangement by Ian Green. Singer had allegedly discovered Sarstedt busking in Paris, although this sounds like the kind of story that’s often invented for PR purposes – Sarstedt, lest we forget, came from a musical family and his brother had scored hits earlier in the decade as Eden Kane. Singer’s later production work included David Sylvian and Japan. Ian Green had also arranged the minimalist backing on ‘Where Do You Go To’ and his work was heard on singles from Edison Lighthouse (‘Love Grows’) and Thunderclap Newman (‘Something in the Air’), which is no mean track record and gives an indication of his versatility.

The real underlying sadness behind ‘Frozen Orange Juice’ is that it would be Peter Sarstedt’s chart swansong, and though he would continue to release singles until 1978, none would ever repeat the spectacular success of 1969. In a way, the song feels almost prophetic: as Sarstedt’s narrator realises, that ‘fantastic day’ in the sun simply couldn’t last.

I thought it was worth sharing this silly sleeve which makes an ice lolly out of Sarstedt