The Greatest Record Ever Made

This is adapted from something I posted on the Underground ages ago. I’m thinking about it again because I’ve got a gig coming up, and have decided to play this song.

Petula Clark singing "Downtown," that is, and for the last eight months I have been unable to listen to it without weeping. Tears of worry, tears of joy at the promise of hope renewed, that life is good and love is real and all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
I mean, it's fundamentally an optimistic song, but it's a hard-won optimism—reaching for the light while never denying the dark, saying Yes, there is hope, but it is fragile and must be nurtured.
There's this struggle even in the music—you've got these brassy builds, and then the reassurances come—"How can you lose?"—but the music decresendos and Petula's voice drops down, husky, almost breaking, as it shifts to the minor key, belying the blithe sentiment... and then from almost nothing the music fights its way back up, as Petula ascends the melody back up the high point.
"Downtown"'s promise of happiness is meaningless without the fear of loneliness to drive it. That it manages to suggest both (and the happiness it promises isn't specifically sexual—it's the promise of a kindred spirit: "You may find somebody kind to help and understand you, someone who is just like you and needs a helping hand to guide them along...") is what makes this the Greatest Record Ever Made (no disrespect to "River Deep, Mountain High").
When we consider that Petula Clark first became a star in 1943, a plucky eleven-year-old with her own radio show (Pet's Parlor), singing songs of hope and glory for British audiences deep in the daily terror of the Blitz, the arc that led her to "Downtown" seems clear.
See, I've long thought that the popular songs of WWII represented a remarkable exercise in creative visualization, or NLP, or "fake it 'til you make it"—put simply, of magick. Remember, when these songs were first written and sung, there was no guarantee that the lights ever would go on again all over the world, no certainty that there ever would be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover. These songs visualized victory, and peace, and a return to the status quo—and singers like Vera Lynn and Vaughn Monroe and, yes, Petula Clark sang this world into being: the secret heroes of the second World War.

This has been Art's purpose since caveman days. Those paintings of the bison hunt at Lascaux—once thought to have been commemorative in nature—are now believed to have been painted before the hunt, as a magickal act to ensure its success.

Having played her part (consciously or not) in assuring Allied victory in WWII, Petula Clark turned her attention to the great postwar crisis, a disaster no less damaging, in its way, than any war, and developing out of postwar alienation and the breakdown of traditional communities—what Harold Kushner calls "the plague of loneliness."
From the lump-in-the-throat reassurances of "We'll Meet Again" to the gentle nudge of "You're gonna be all right now," only the battleground has changed—from the smoking ruins of a world at war to an inner wasteland of teenage angst. Trench optimism. Hope in hell. There's nothing as joyous or as heartbreaking as someone putting on a brave face, reaching for love in a cruel world. And it's still Petula you want on your side.