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"Don't go too fast, but I go pretty far ..."

The song burst onto the charts in the golden halcyon days of early 1972; a rollingly precocious, almost insane melody with bouncy allusive single-syllable lyrics,  bringing forth in the listener nothing but sheer unadulterated joy; except for the actual adults of the time who, as always, read into the song every weird obsession they could think of. I remember the song being banned from some radio stations, as if in 1972 we were still struggling vainly against the Reformation. 

The writer, Melanie Safka, who died last week at age 76, later admitted having written the song, Brand New Key, in about fifteen minutes. It was a very good fifteen minutes, producing two minutes and twenty -six seconds of pop-song perfection. RIP.


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