The Feelies – Everybody’s Got Something To Hide (Except Me And My Monkey)

16th February 2022 · 1980, 1980s, Music

Here’s a Beatles cover by The Feelies, whose 1980 debut album was a landmark in the New Wave that followed punk.

You could argue that Crazy Rhythms was the progenitor of what would one day be called “jangle pop,” though it has a more underground sound than that indicates.

It’s a record that seems to take as its template the classic Live 1969 album by The Velvet Underground, whose mellow, narcotic grooves approximate the sensation of being under the influence of opiates, and went on to provide a prototype for the sort of band R.E.M. and The Smiths would soon become.

Among the self-penned songs with titles like The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness – an apt title for a nerdy-looking band from New Jersey dressed in preppy clothes – was this uncharacteristically jaunty and equally long-titled number called Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey.

It says much about the originality of The Feelies that this, the sole cover version, is probably the least effective number on an album that I would heartily recommend to anyone who doesn’t know it. Their own songs have better tunes and significantly better lyrics.

It was a long time before I noticed in the credits that this was written by Lennon and McCartney, and longer still before I heard it in its original form on The White Album… if I ever did.

Listening to the Beatles version now, plodding along at half the speed with Lennon hoarsely yelling the nonsense lyrics, I don’t think I missed much.