“Brand New Key”/”Beautiful People”/”Photograph” (Melanie)

In honor of her passing, today’s songs of the day are all by the artist known as Melanie (real name: Melanie Safka). She passed on January 23.

Melanie was born on February 3, 1947, in Queens, New York City. She was regarded as a “beatnik” in high school and ran away to California. (She later returned home to her family in New Jersey, where they had moved.) She started performing at a local coffeehouse when she was in high school and later graduated to bigger clubs, such as The Bitter End, in New York City.

Melanie was, for want of a better word, a hippie. She wore peasant dresses and robes, wore her hair straight and long, and sang about peace and love and not eating animals. More often than not she performed completely solo, just her and her guitar, her voice both childlike and knowing. She had a distinctive style—naïve, honest, and utterly charming.

After getting noticed in the clubs, Melanie signed a contract with Columbia Records and released two singles that didn’t go anywhere. She subsequently signed with Buddah Records and scored her first chart success in France, where her single “Bobo’s Party” went to #1 in 1969. She had another hit later that year in the Netherlands with the single “Beautiful People.”

This success in Europe and a growing audience here in the states resulted in Melanie being invited to perform at the Woodstock music festival in August of 1969. That experience gained her tremendous exposure and inspired her 1970 hit, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” a previous classic song of the day. That single was Melanie’s first big hit in the U.S., going all the way to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Melanie released four studio albums on Buddah Records (Born to Be, Melanie, Candles in the Rain, and The Good Book) and a number of singles, chief among them “Peace Will Come (According to Plan),” “What Have They Done to My Song, Ma,” and “Nickel Song.” She also recorded some pretty good covers of other material, most notably the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” and James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind.”

Not entirely satisfied with Buddah, Melanie left that label in 1971 and formed her own label, Neighborhood Records, with her husband, Peter Schekeryk. In preparing her first album for the new label, she wrote the song “Brand New Key” (AKA The Roller Skate Song) as a bit of a lark to fill a gap between more serious songs. The song purportedly was about a young girl attempting to attract a fella, but the lyrics were teasingly sexual in nature:

Well, I’ve got a brand-new pair of roller skates
You’ve got a brand-new key
I think that we should get together
And try them on to see

Ms. Safka denied all the sexual innuendo in the song (including the line, “Don’t go too fast but I go pretty far”), saying instead:

“[The song], ‘Brand New Key,’ I wrote in about fifteen minutes one night. I thought it was cute; a kind of old thirties tune. I guess a key and a lock have always been Freudian symbols, and pretty obvious ones at that. There was no deep serious expression behind the song, but people read things into it. They made up incredible stories as to what the lyrics said and what the song meant. In some places, it was even banned from the radio. My idea about songs is that once you write them, you have very little say in their life afterward. It’s a lot like having a baby. You conceive a song, deliver it, and then give it as good a start as you can. After that, it’s on its own. People will take it any way they want to take it.”

Intended innuendo or not, “Brand New Key” was a hit—Melanie’s biggest hit, it turns out. Released in October of 1971 (and included on her Gather Me album), the song went all the way to #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100. It also hit #1 in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and went to #4 on the UK Singles Chart.

Melanie didn’t have any other big hits after “Brand New Key,” although she continued to make some great music. Her best post-“Key” albums were 1972’s Stoneground Words and, especially, 1976’s comeback LP, Photograph. That later album, released on Atlantic Records, showed a more mature side of the singer-songwriter, with first-rate production values and some very powerful songs. Atlantic released “Cyclone” as a single (it failed to chart), but all the songs are terrific. I particularly like the song “Photograph,” which is all about revisiting the past while growing older:

Do you have a photograph when you were still in high school
Were you happy in it
Little reason lots of rhyme
Were you happy in it at the time

Way back in your memory
Do you recall the line
When your heart was in it
And your reason changed your mind
Did you love forever at the time

Are you living here and now
Or in the moments past
Is now tomorrow’s memory and will the memory last
How much of this will pass

Melanie continued performing and recording almost up until her death; her last studio album was released in 2010 and in 2020 she released a live album of a 1974 concert. She remained the same peaceful hippie all her days, her hair grayer and her life filled with three (now adult) children (Leilah, Jeordie, and Beau Jarred). Somewhere in there she moved to Tennessee, where she continued to practice vegetarianism and perform the occasional concert. Her husband Peter passed away in 2010.

Melanie Safka had a unique place in the music of the late ’60s and early ’70s. She passed away on January 23, 2024, at the age of 76. She will be missed.