Percy Faith got a lot of mileage out of his "
Themes for Young Lovers" concept of albums of contemporary romantic music, with
Themes for Young Lovers (1963) bringing him a gold record certification and
More Themes for Young Lovers (1964) also seeing some chart action, even in the much-changed
Beatles era of
pop music. The title
Today's Themes for Young Lovers pointedly signaled that
Faith was not to be dissuaded by the resurgence of
rock and, as usual, he found some appealing soft sounds from the recent charts to appropriate, including
Harpers Bizarre's
"The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," Herman's Hermits'
"There's a Kind of Hush (All Over the World)," Engelbert Humperdinck's
"Release Me," Al Martino's
"Mary in the Morning," Frankie Valli's
"Can't Take My Eyes Off You," the Association's
"Windy," the Turtles'
"Happy Together," and
Nancy and
Frank Sinatra's
"Somethin' Stupid," all of them hits in the first half of 1967. Usually,
Faith employed his angelic female chorus to sing the lyrics in an airy, pleasant manner, but occasionally he strategically left them out. For example, he did well to treat
"Somethin' Stupid" as an instrumental, which emphasized the attractiveness of the melody in the absence of the somewhat sarcastic lyrics that would not have sung well coming from a chorus.
Faith had been pushed down from the top of the charts by the
British Invasion, but his albums continued to appeal to an audience that appreciated the softer sounds on the hit parade, especially when they had been laundered through the medium of strings and
choral singing. ~ William Ruhlmann