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| "Kites Are Fun" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by The Free Design | ||||
| from the album Kites are Fun | ||||
| B-side | "The Proper Ornaments" | |||
| Released | 1967 | |||
| Genre | Soft pop | |||
| Length | 2:41 | |||
| Label | Project 3 | |||
| Songwriter(s) |
| |||
| Producer(s) | Enoch Light | |||
| The Free Design singles chronology | ||||
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"Kites Are Fun" is a song by American group The Free Design from their debut studio album by the same name.
"Kites Are Fun" is a 2-minute-41-second soft pop song switching between the keys of E major and A major, with a tempo of 138 beats per minute. The vocals range from F#3 to B4. The song is carried by instruments such as acoustic guitar, tambourines, bass guitar, soft drums and a flute.
The song, written by Chris Dedrick and produced by Enoch Light, uses kites to symbolize youth, innocence and memories, describing a group of children, presumably the Dedrick siblings, running, laughing and flying kites in a field far away from their parents because the parents don't realize that kites are fun.
On the B-side is a song titled "The Proper Ornaments."
A writer for Billboard magazine called it an "interesting rhythm item by a unique pop group," said it had "some of the feel" of previous sunshine pop hits from 1966 and 1967 such as "Yellow Balloon" by The Yellow Balloon and "Up, Up and Away" by The 5th Dimension. [1] A writer for Cashbox magazine described it as a "cute, bright and breezy glider with punchy lyrics — an easy-drifting ballad in the modern pop style," and compared the B-side to music from Spanky and Our Gang. [2] PopMatters writer Dylan Nelson wrote "There's something, aside from the haze of '60s sentimentalism that makes the song sort of trippy. Perhaps it’s the very notion of bringing such sophisticated arrangements and such polished sounds to a song so simplistic and childish that feels paradoxically radical." [3]
"Kites Are Fun" cracked the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart (an extension of the Hot 100) at number 114 at the end of 1967, [4] as well as number 33 on the adult contemporary chart, [5] becoming the group's only charting song.
"Gentle on My Mind" is a song that was written and originally recorded by John Hartford, and released on his second studio album, Earthwords & Music (1967). Hartford wrote the song after watching Doctor Zhivago in 1966, as he was inspired by the film and his own personal experiences. The lyrics describe the reminiscences of lost love of a man as he travels through the country. An obituary for Hartford indicated that the lyrics are "about a hobo reminiscing about a lost love". The following year, Hartford released the song as a single on RCA Records.
"Reflections" is a 1967 song recorded by American soul music group The Supremes for the Motown label. The single release was the first Supremes record credited to "Diana Ross and the Supremes", and the song was one of the last Motown hits to be written and produced by Holland–Dozier–Holland before they left the label.
"Back in My Arms Again" is a 1965 song recorded by The Supremes for the Motown label.
"Love Child" is a 1968 song released by the Motown label for Diana Ross & the Supremes. The second single and title track from their album Love Child, it became the Supremes' 11th number-one single in the United States, where it sold 500,000 copies in its first week and 2 million copies by year's end.
Cashbox, also known as Cash Box, is an American music industry trade magazine, originally published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as Cashbox Magazine, an online magazine with weekly charts and occasional special print issues. In addition to the music industry, the magazine covered the amusement arcade industry, including jukebox machines and arcade games.
"Hot Fun in the Summertime" is a 1969 song recorded by Sly and the Family Stone. The single was released just prior to the band's high-profile performance at Woodstock, which greatly expanded their fanbase. The song peaked at number 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart, kept out of the number 1 spot by "I Can't Get Next to You" by The Temptations. "Hot Fun in the Summertime" also peaked at number 3 on the U.S. Billboard soul singles chart in autumn 1969. It is ranked as the seventh biggest U.S. hit of 1969, and the 65th in Canada.
"All I Really Want to Do" is a song written by Bob Dylan and featured on his Tom Wilson-produced 1964 album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. It is arguably one of the most popular songs that Dylan wrote in the period immediately after he abandoned topical songwriting. Within a year of its release on Another Side of Bob Dylan, it had also become one of Dylan's most familiar songs to pop and rock audiences, due to hit cover versions by Cher and the Byrds.
"Love Is Here and Now You're Gone" is a 1967 song recorded by the Supremes for the Motown label.
The Free Design was a Delevan, New York–based vocal group, whose music can be described as sunshine pop and baroque pop. Though they did not achieve much commercial recognition during their main recording career, their work later influenced bands including Stereolab, Cornelius, Pizzicato Five, Beck and The High Llamas.
"Under My Thumb" is a song recorded by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Under My Thumb" features a marimba played by Brian Jones. Although it was never released as a single in English-speaking countries, it is one of the band's more popular songs from the late 1960s and appears on several best-of compilations, such as Hot Rocks 1964–1971. It was included as the fourth track on both the American and United Kingdom versions of the band's 1966 studio album Aftermath.
Kites Are Fun is the first album by The Free Design, released in 1967. The group was signed to the Project 3 label after a demo recording that was completed with the assistance of the band's father.
"Winchester Cathedral" is a song by the New Vaudeville Band, a British novelty group established by the song's composer, Geoff Stephens, and was released in late 1966 by Fontana Records.
"The Happening" is a 1967 song recorded by Motown artists The Supremes. It served as the theme song of the 1967 Columbia Pictures film The Happening, and was released as a single by Motown at the time of the film's release that spring. While the movie flopped, the song peaked at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart in May, becoming The Supremes' tenth number 1 single in the United States, peaking in the top 10 on the UK Singles Chart at number 6, and in the top 5 in the Australian Pop Chart and in the Dutch Pop Chart.
"The Last Thing on My Mind" is a song written by American musician and singer-songwriter Tom Paxton in the early 1960s and recorded first by Paxton in 1964. It is based on the traditional lament song "The Leaving of Liverpool". The song was released on Paxton's 1964 album Ramblin' Boy, which was his first album released on Elektra Records.
"Never My Love" is a pop standard written by American siblings Don and Dick Addrisi, and best known from a hit 1967 recording by the Association. The Addrisi Brothers had two Top 40 hits as recording artists, but their biggest success as songwriters was "Never My Love". Recorded by dozens of notable artists in the decades since, in 1999 the music publishing rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) announced it was the second most-played song on radio and television of the 20th century in the U.S.
"Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye" is a song written by John D. Loudermilk. It was first released in 1962 by Don Cherry, as a country song and again as a doo-wop in 1967 by the group The Casinos on its album of the same name, and was a number 6 pop hit that year. The song has since been covered by Eddy Arnold, whose version was a number 1 country hit in 1968, and by Neal McCoy, whose version became a Top 5 country hit in 1996.
...Sing for Very Important People is a 1970 album by The Free Design. It was the band's fifth album. The album was a children's album, inspired in part by Peter, Paul and Mary's album Peter, Paul and Mommy of the previous year. ...Sing for Very Important People included a combination of original songs, covers, and a number of songs that had appeared on the band's previous albums: "Bubbles", "Daniel Dolphin" and "Kites Are Fun". "Little Cowboy" was written by Art Dedrick, father of most of the band's members.
"My Pledge of Love" is a song written and performed by singer-songwriter Joe Stafford, Jr. of the American rhythm-and-blues band Joe Jeffrey Group. It was released in April 1969, as the group's first single, and was produced by Jerry Meyers and Alan Klein. It appeared on the group's only album My Pledge of Love, which was released in 1974.
My Elusive Dreams is a studio album by American country artists David Houston and Tammy Wynette. It was released on Epic Records in August 1967 and contained ten tracks. It was the duo's first and only collaborative album together. My Elusive Dreams contained mostly duets between Houston and Wynette. The album was named for the title track, which topped the American country songs chart in 1967. Another single titled "It's All Over" also became a commercially-successful country song. The album received positive reviews following its release.
"An Open Letter to My Teenage Son" is a spoken-word song performed by American WMAX radio newscaster Victor Lundberg. Released in September 1967, the song was written by Robert R. Thompson and produced by Jack Tracy. The recording of Lundberg's vocals is played over "Battle Hymn of the Republic." It features on Lundberg's only album, "An Open Letter."