1966 The Overlanders: Michelle

From the point of view of their contemporaries, one of the benefits to be gained from the prolificacy of The Beatles at this time was their policy of releasing stand-alone singles meant that their albums weren't ruthlessly strip mined for the same, even where they were full of potential hits just ripe for the plucking. This may have preserved the purity of their output, but it also allowed other artists to cherry pick those same album tracks and serve them up under their own name, with 'Michelle' being a case in point.

As it appears on 'Rubber Soul', McCartney's Francophile homage charms in its brevity, a 'White Album' cut two years early that works well as the side one closer but lacks sufficient substance to stand by itself as a single. Which is fine because it was never meant to, but in order to thicken the pot folkies The Overlanders stir in a generous helping of chunky stodge and sickly sincerity that makes their 'Michelle' flow with all the warmth of thin blood around a fat lined artery. It's another 'beefing up' approach that although worked so well on 'Keep On Running', makes 'Michelle' a house of cards stuck together with gooey flour and water paste - the overall structure remains broadly the same, but all delicacy and fragility is gone. Which was kind of the main selling point in the first place.