Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)
Released May 18, 1972
Format 7″
Recorded 1972
Genre Soft rock
Length 2:55 (Single remix/edit)
3:10 (Album mix version)
Label Epic Records
Songwriter(s) Elliot Lurie
Producer(s) Mike Gershman, Bob Liftin and the Looking Glass
The lyrics tell of Brandy, a barmaid in a busy western seaport harbor town which serves “a hundred ships a day.” Though lonely sailors flirt with her, she pines for one who’s long since left her because he claimed his life, his love, and his lady, was “the sea.”
The urban myth that Brandy was based on Mary Ellis (1750–1828), a spinster in New Brunswick, New Jersey,has been refuted by Lurie himself.
Lurie also refutes the suggestion that the song was written by songwriter Stephen Homner, and eventually sold to Elliot Lurie after Lurie expressed interest in the song.
In February 1972, Robert Mandel was the Epic Records Promotion Manager in Washington, D.C. He received a test pressing of an album by a new group named “Looking Glass”. He took the test pressing around to every radio station in the Washington/Baltimore region. At the time, WPGC AM/FM was one of the leading Top 40 stations in the country and was the number one radio station in DC. Harv Moore was the Program Director. He put the song into a one-hour rotation for two days and as Harv related at the time, “the switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree”. He said that he had never received a response like that on a record in his 15 years in radio. Based on the airplay at WPGC and all the other Top 40 stations that followed, Epic rush-released the single of “Brandy”. Based on requests alone, two weeks later, when the single finally hit the stores, “Brandy” was the number one record in DC without a single copy yet sold. Other stations around the country started playing it and it ended up being a number one million seller. A year later when Harv celebrated his 10th Anniversary at WPGC, Looking Glass returned the favor and played at the bash the station held in his honor.
Barry Manilow’s “Mandy”
Barry Manilow’s 1974 “Mandy” was a cover of a song originally titled “Brandy”, released in February 1972 by Scott English; however, Manilow changed the title following the success of the Looking Glass single, so as not to get the two songs confused. This song is not related to the song by Looking Glass.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia