1961 Helen Shapiro: You Don't Know

Helen Shapiro was (and remains) the youngest female solo artist to have a UK number one. I don't know how hard the 'she's only fourteen' angle was pushed in 1961, but to my mind it's an impressive fact on paper but rather less so on the ears. That Shapiro can belt out a tune there can be no doubt and this would have slayed them on whatever would have passed for The X Factor in 1961, but she attacks the lyric with a would be sophistication that it doesn't deserve. In style, 'You Don't Know' is a throwback to the 'grown up' pre-pop of the fifties, a big, string laden ballad about loving from afar. What say Shapiro had in the songs she was given to sing, again, I don't know, but she doesn't sound like she's enjoying any of this.

Granted, with the song being what it is she's not meant to, but neither does she sound convincing in her apparent heartache: "You don't know just how I feel, for my love I daren't reveal. I am so, I'm so afraid, you might not care" - as an expression of teenage angst it would have worked better rubbed in the dirt of some Shangri-Las low life melodrama, but Shapiro's 14 going on 40 delivery ill suits such expression of an adolescent crush and the syrupy string arrangement completes the little girl dressed in her mother's ball gown aura of the song - it's fancy dress and not much more. Shapiro's only fault was perhaps arriving on the scene a few years too early; with writers and producers more attuned to the pop sensibility she could have had a career with legs. 1961 did not seem to know what to do with her though and in a few short years she'd be all washed up, leaving those Sandie's and Dusty's to steal all her thunder.