1972 Looking Glass released their self-titled debut album. First single "Don't It Make You Feel Good" was unnoticed with the B side "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" until Harv Moore, a DJ in DC started playing it, and it went to #1 on the Hot 100 (#7 AC)
The lyrics tell of Brandy, a barmaid in a busy seaport harbor town which serves "a hundred ships a day." Though lonely sailors flirt with her, she pines for one who has 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 was thrilled with the deeper meaning given to the song when its lyrics were used as a metaphor by a father explaining his life's choices to his son in the film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Comments