Covered: Tony Macaulay, Volume 2: 1970-1984

I just posted Volume 1 of my "Covered" series albums for British songwriter Tony Macaulay. Here's the second and final volume already.

As I mentioned in Volume 1, Macaulay had a remarkable knack for writing catchy, poppy hits. His winning streak continued well into the 1970s. His biggest hits in this volume were "You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me" by The New Seekers in 1973, "Don't Give Up on Us" by David Soul in 1976, and "Silver Lady," also by David Soul, in 1977. All three of those songs reached Number One in the British charts. He did have a lot of chart success in the U.S., for instance "Don't Give Up on Us" was a Number One there as well, but for some reason he had more success in Britain.

In 1970, he stopped working with his main songwriting partner in Volume 1, John Macleod, when they began working for different publishing companies. But he worked with other professional songwriters, especially Geoff Stephens, Barry Mason, and the team of Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway. But he wrote some songs by himself. For instance, "(Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All," "Letter to Lucille," "Falling Apart at the Seams," "Don't Give Up on Us."

I'm pretty confident Macaulay could have kept writing hits in the 1980s and beyond. He did have one hits in the 1980s, "Alibis" by Sergio Mendes, that shows him successfully adapting to changing musical styles. But he increasingly lost interest in writing pop songs. Instead, starting in the early 1970s, he turned his attention to film scores and musical theater. He was successful in both, winning nine British Academy Awards. In the 1990s, he then shifted gears again, and turned to writing thriller novels. He was fairly successful at that as well. He's still alive (and eighty-one years old) as I write this in 2025. 

Pretty much all the songs here are the hit versions. For a couple, like "Gasoline Alley Bred" and "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again," I chose alternate versions since due to posting the other version on other Covered albums. "Bluebird" wasn't a hit, but I liked it so I included it. Normally with these Covered albums, I try to include at least all the big hits. But Macaulay wrote so many that I skipped some I wasn't that keen on, for instance "Play Me Like You Play Your Guitar" by Duane Eddy, "Down on the Beach Tonight," by the Drifters, and "Going in with My Eyes Open," by David Soul, all of which made the Top Ten in Britain.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Gasoline Alley Bred (Blue Mink)
02 Something Old, Something New (Fantastics)
03 [Last Night] I Didn't Get to Sleep at All (5th Dimension)
04 You Won't Find Another Fool like Me (New Seekers)
05 Bluebird (Carl Wayne)
06 Letter to Lucille (Tom Jones)
07 I Get a Little Sentimental Over You (New Seekers)
08 Kissin' in the Back Row of the Movies (Drifters)
09 Falling Apart at the Seams (Marmalade)
10 Silver Lady (David Soul)
11 Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again (Connie Cato)
12 Don't Give Up on Us (David Soul)
13 You're More than a Number in My Little Red Book (Drifters)
14 Let's Have a Quiet Night In (David Soul)
15 Alibis (Sergio Mendes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7HbNAqA9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/9NoE6XxPOKRpZha/file

I don't know what year the cover photo is from. But I'm guessing on little details that it was taken after the cover photo from Volume 1, which dates to 1972. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Kolorize program. Then I used the Krea AI program on it to improve the detail.

Covered: Tony Macaulay, Volume 1: 1966-1970

I need to post more of these albums from my "Covered" series. I keep finding more and more songwriters that I'd never even heard of before starting on this project. Here's one such example: Tony Macaulay. In the 1960s and 70s, there was a whole stable of professional songwriters in Britain writing lots of hits, and Macaulay was one of the more successful ones, so much so that I found enough for two volumes. 

Macaulay was unabashedly aiming for hit singles with practically every song, so get ready for a poppy sound. But he had hit after hit because he had a knack for writing catchy melodies.

He started working by getting an office job at a record company. That very quickly turned into production and songwriting as his musical talents became evident. For the first few years, he mostly wrote songs with John Macleod, who was two decades older and much more musically experienced. Macleod showed him the ropes of professional-level production and songwriting, allowing him to quickly advance. Within a year of starting this job, at about the age of 20, Macaulay and Macleod not only had a Number One hit in Britain with the song "Baby Now that I've Found You" by the Foundations, it was replaced in the top spot with their song "Let the Heartaches Begin" by Long John Baldry! Having two Number Ones in a row was rare even for the likes of the Beatles, but it showed rare talent. Macaulay would have four more Number Ones in Britain, and about three dozen more Top 40 hits there, plus lots of success in the U.S.

I considered making crediting this to both Macaulay and Macleod, except Macleod left the songwriting team fairly early on. His last co-written hit was in 1970, while Macaulay kept going strong for the rest of the 1970s. Plus, Macleod never had any hits songs co-written with anyone else, while Macaulay had plenty more hits, even during the few years he was working with Macleod. For instance, on this album, "Build Me Up Buttercup" was co-written by him and Mike d'Abo, "Lights of Cincinnati," "Smile a Little Smile for Me," and "Sorry Suzanne" were co-written by him and Geoff Stephens, "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" by him and Barry Mason, "Home Lovin' Man" and "(Blame It) On the Pony Express," by him and the team of Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway. Generally speaking, the other songs here were written by Macaulay and Macleod. 

(I've already posted Covered volumes for Cook and Greenaway. I plan on posting volumes for the likes of Geoff Stephens and Barry Mason as well.)

As I mentioned above, in the 1960s and 70s, there was a whole stable of professional songwriters in Britain writing hits. It seems Macaulay wrote songs with a great many of them. But he also could write songs on his own, since he usually worked on both the music and lyrics, as opposed to many songwriters who specialize in one or the other. For instance, "Baby Make It Soon" here is credited solely to him. In the 1970s, he'd write many more hits without any co-writers. 

Most of the songs here are the original hit versions. However, I found a few songs he wrote that weren't hits but sounded like hits to my ears, so I added those in: "I Won't Try to Change Your Mind," "Someday," "Heaven Knows I'm Missing Him Now," and "Take Away the Emptiness Too."

Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Tony Macaulay - Wikipedia

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 I Won't Try to Change Your Mind (Sandra Barry)
02 Baby Now that I've Found You (Foundations)
03 Someday (Paper Dolls)
04 Build Me Up Buttercup (Foundations)
05 Let the Heartaches Begin (Long John Baldry)
06 Something Here in My Heart [Keeps A-Tellin' Me No] (Paper Dolls)
07 Heaven Knows I'm Missing Him Now (Sandie Shaw)
08 Smile a Little Smile for Me (Flying Machine)
09 In the Bad, Bad Old Days [Before You Loved Me] (Foundations)
10 Baby Make It Soon (Marmalade)
11 Take Away the Emptiness Too (Tina Tott)
12 Sorry Suzanne (Hollies)
13 Lights of Cincinnati (Scott Walker)
14 That Same Old Feeling (Pickettywitch)
15 Home Lovin' Man (Andy Williams)
16 Love Grows [Where My Rosemary Goes] (Edison Lighthouse)
17 Blame It on the Pony Express (Johnny Johnson & the Bandwagon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tGgE5o9s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/z5hmN1fg5EzatAC/file

The cover photo is from 1972. The original was in black and white, but I converted it to color using the Kolorize program. I also used Krea AI to improve the detail.