Continuing on from “Dancing in the Moonlight” and “Moonlight Feels Right,” today’s classic moon-themed song of the day is “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” by Jonathan King. This track made it all the way to #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September of 1965.
“Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” is ostensibly a song about loneliness, set to a melancholy 6/8 melody. You can sense it in the opening lyrics:
Streets full of people, all alone
Roads full of houses, never home
Church full of singing, out of tune
Everyone’s gone to the moon
Eyes full of sorrow, never wet
Hands full of money, all in debt
Sun coming out in the middle of June
Everyone’s gone to the moon
British singer-songwriter Jonathan King (initially credited as Johnathan King) recorded “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” when he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge University. It was his only hit as a performing artist but he later had a stellar career as a record producer. He was responsible for discovering and naming the band Genesis and producing their first album, 1967’s From Genesis to Revelation. King produced 10cc and the Bay City Rollers and, in the years 1971 and 1972, was responsible for 10 top thirty UK singles. He also produced the Brit Awards in the 1990s and help choose Britain’s entries in the Eurovision Song Contest for several years in the ’90s.
King’s career had a bit of an ignominious end, however. In September 2001 he was convicted of sexually abusing five teenaged boys in the 1980s. He was released on parole in 2005, wrote a handful of novels and two autobiographies, produced three films, and was charged again for similar offenses in 2017. This trial involved accusations of sexual abuse in the 1970s and 1980s and resulted in not guilty verdicts based on errors committed during the police investigation. Those errors cast doubt on King’s earlier conviction, causing the Criminal Cases Review Commission to reopen an investigation into those charges. King is still alive and free today, aged 78.
