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And by a coincidence of running order, this follows the track it deposed from the top of the chart. I worry sometimes that I might be writing too much about myself in these entries, but the first thing I remember about this song is that I failed to understand the metaphor and wondered what he was doing with all those hats. Now I've grown up a bit and realised that it's about a man leaving a trail of one-night-stands behind him, it seems like there are several different ways to play the lyric: shamefully, boastfully, fearfully (as if you've just found the consequences coming back to haunt you) or perhaps most tantalisingly in a kind of "Aw shucks," way , employing confession as a pretext for boasting - I can imagine Sinatra doing quite a good job of it. Paul Young, however, doesn't seem to attempt any of these approaches, or if he does he's not very persuasive, and that's a double problem with a song whose protagonist has to be quite a persuader in order to, ahem, lay his hat that often.
The obvious thing to do was to turn to Marvin Gaye's version, which doesn't completely work either, although Gaye is the more convincing vocalist. Or maybe I just think that because of what I know about his life. It does heighten how different this arrangement is though: I'd remembered it as being very heavy and overdone, but actually there's not very much to it. It's just that Pino Palladino's fretless bass is so dominant that it makes the record feel sort of muddy and overwrought. Young's scat-singing on the way to the last chorus is in retrospect reminiscent of Gaye, which suggests that he was a fan, but he doesn't measure up to the man here. What he did do was to establish himself as a star, going on to apply this formula to various other songs for many a year to come.
This is the last track on the first disc of the album, so it represents a sort of half-way mark for me.
Also appearing on: Now 5, Now 20
Available on: Wherever I Lay My Hat: the Best of Paul Young
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