One critic’s view: “If you wonder why punk had to happen, listen to this song.” – Andy Greene @ Rolling Stone
The public’s view: 2.51 / 5.00
Morris Albert was born in Brazil as the son of Austrian immigrants. As such, he is presumably most comfortable conversing in either Brazilian or Austrian. Nonetheless, he summoned up his poetic talents to write a smash hit in English without needing a huge vocabulary. He chose one word and then beat the living crap out of it until everyone was ready to banish that word from the language. He could have selected a word like “morphological”, “Congregationalism”, or “typhoid”, but no. Albert opted for a word that was mushy and imprecise rather than entertaining or informative. The word that he chose was “feelings”. Nothing more than “feelings”.
When I was a child in the 1970s, I saw “Feelings” mocked more often than I heard the actual recording. Comedy skits and Mad Magazine cartoons depicted awful lounge singers groaning their way through painful renditions of it. “Feelings. Woe, woe, woe, feelings.” “Feelings” may also be the only hit song whose lyrics have been ruled terrible by a court of law.
This was the outcome of a copyright suit in which Albert was accused of stealing the song’s melody from an obscure French tune called “Pour Toi”. “Pour Toi” had been featured in the 1957 film Le feu aux poudres. If I remember my high school French correctly, that title translates to The Fire in the Powder Room. Albert vigorously denied the plagiarism allegations, claiming that he had never heard “Pour Toi” or seen the associated film. He had better things to do than watch foreign movies about flammable toilets. He was found liable nonetheless, because his song was deemed to have such a “striking similarity” to the other that it couldn’t be just a coincidence. A million monkeys could each write a million songs a day for a million years, and would only come up with “Pour Toi” or “Feelings” – not both.
Albert’s best hope of averting a large payout was to explain that his lyrics, rather than the infringing melody, had made “Feelings” a commercial success. Ordinarily, the ownership of a song is split 50-50 between the composer and the lyricist. However, Albert retained an expert witness who testified that the lyrics were far superior to the music, and therefore the Brazilian entertainer should be allowed to keep the majority of the record’s profits. The expert then undercut his own argument when he was asked to sing “Feelings” on the stand and was unable to remember most of the words that he had just praised. The jury ultimately awarded Albert a mere 12% of the song, giving the “Pour Toi” fellow the other 88%. Albert’s expert had told the court that even a “bad” lyricist always gets at least 15%. Ouch.
How did Morris Albert get crushed so thoroughly in this trial? My guess is that the jurors were all heavily biased against him because they had lived through the lengthy “Feelings” rampage of 1975 and 1976. Unlike many Bad Top Ten Hits, this song did not race up the charts and right back down again. It inexplicably stuck around for months, frustrating and angering the vast majority of people who wished it would go away. In that respect, Albert was the forerunner of Teddy Swims. If there is ever a copyright complaint regarding “Lose Control”, the jury will probably decide that Teddy should be tarred and feathered.
As for my opinion of “Feelings”, this is one instance where I believe the consensus view is pretty much correct. I know I’m being vague, but it’s a feeling that I have. Nothing more than a feeling. Woe, woe, woe.
My rating: 3 / 10
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