Melanie Safka took a swipe at the music biz in this song, which originally came out as the B-side of her frist hit single, Ruby Tuesday.

When this song popped up over the closing credits of the Tom Cruise film Digger, I was transported straight back to my childhood.

Its appearance at the end of a film to which it has no thematic link whatsoever was almost as much of a surprise as how much I enjoyed such a poorly-reviewed movie.

It’s no masterpiece but its “satire of a satire” format is a clever conceit and the OTT performances of Cruise and Goodman are entirely justifiable within that context. To say any more would constitute a spoiler.

But back to the song, which may or may not be a response to how Melanie Safka was treated by the music industry after coming to attention way down the bill at Woodstock.

Her inimitable childlike vibrato first came to my child’s ears in 1971 with her version of what I did not know then was a Rolling Stones song, Ruby Tuesday.

This song was on the B-side but got a release of its own a few months later after The New Seekers recorded it as their first single.

Neither did particularly well in the UK, the latter stalling just outside the Top 40 and Melanie creeping in at No.39.

Ironically, considering the title and theme of the song, it has been recorded in very different styles by several diffrent artists – Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Billie Jo Spears and Ma Ralney & Peanuts from an American TV programme called The Lawrence Welk Show.

There has also been a version by a German singer, Daliah Lavi, a French one by Dalida (and an Anglo-French one by Jeanette), a Czech one by Helena Vondráčková and a Serbian one by Yugoslav rock band Bajaga I Instruktori.

Even more ironic was what was done to Melanie’s song by ad agencies, adapting it for a 1970s soap commercial (“Look what they’ve done to my Lifebuoy”), a 1980s motel commercial (“Look what they’ve done to Ramada”) and a breakfast cereal (“Look what they’ve done to my oatmeal”).

Presumably all this was contractually out of her control because Melanie, who would later release her music on her own label, named it Article 27 Records after Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which grants the right to participate freely in cultural life without “harmful exploitation.”

More recently, Miley Cyrus filmed a charming version for her Backyard Sessions series, which Melanie liked so much that she joined her for a duet of the song in 2015.