"Downtown" is a song written and produced by the English composer Tony Hatch. Its lyrics speak of going to spend time in an urban downtown as a means of escape from everyday life. The 1964 version recorded by British singer Petula Clark became an international hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the UK Singles Chart. Hatch received the 1981 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.Lister, David, "Pop ballads bite back in lyrical fashion", The Independent, 28 May 1994

The song has been covered by many singers, including Dolly Parton, Emma Bunton and the Saw Doctors. Frank Sinatra recorded it on his album Strangers in the Night in 1966.

Composition

Tony Hatch first worked with Petula Clark when he assisted her producer Alan A. Freeman on her 1961 1 hit "Sailor". In 1963 Freeman asked Hatch to take over as Clark's regular producer. Hatch subsequently produced five English-language singles for Clark, none of which charted.

In late 1964 Hatch made his first visit to New York City, spending three days there in search of material from music publishers for the artists he was producing. He recalled, "I was staying at a hotel on Central Park and I wandered down to Broadway and to Times Square and, naively, I thought I was downtown. ... I loved the whole atmosphere there and the [music] came to me very, very quickly". He was standing on the corner of 48th Street in Midtown, waiting for the traffic lights to change and looking towards Times Square when "the melody first came to me, just as the neon signs went on."

Hatch envisioned his embryonic composition "as a sort of doo wop R&B song", which he thought to eventually pitch to the Drifters: He had scored his biggest success to date with the Searchers' "Sugar and Spice" modelled on the Drifters' hit "Sweets for My Sweet", and had also produced a cover version of the Drifters' "Up on the Roof" for Julie Grant. It has been said that Hatch gave Julie Grant the opportunity to record "Downtown" which Grant turned down, but this does not accord with Hatch's statement that he played "Downtown" for Petula Clark within a few days of conceiving the melody and only completed the song's lyrics after Clark had asked to record it. Hatch has also said that, before Clark expressed interest in "Downtown", "it never occurred to me that a white woman could even sing it." Hatch has subsequently denied originally offering "Downtown" to the Drifters.

Within a few days of his New York City trip Hatch visited Paris to present Clark with three or four songs he had acquired from New York publishers for Clark to consider recording at a London recording session scheduled for 16 October 1964, which was roughly two weeks away. Hatch said of the meeting: "She was not very enthusiastic about [the material] and asked me if I was working on anything new myself."Daeida April 2010 p.2 According to Clark, besides the title lyric, Hatch had only written "one or two lines." Hatch recalled: "Reluctantly, I played her the tune of my New York inspiration and slipped in the word 'Downtown' in the appropriate places." Clark, who first heard "Downtown" from her kitchen, having stepped away to make a pot of tea, told Hatch: "That's the one I want to record." "Get that finished. Get a good lyric in it. Get a great arrangement and I think we'll at least have a song we're proud to record even if it isn't a hit."

Recording "Downtown" was recorded on 16 October 1964 at the Pye Studios in Marble Arch. Thirty minutes before the session was scheduled, Hatch was still touching up the song's lyrics in the studio's washroom. Hatch said of his arrangement: "I had to connect with young record buyers... but not alienate Pet[ula]'s older core audience... The trick was to make a giant orchestra sound like a rock band." Hatch insisted that all session personnel on his productions be recorded performing together. The session personnel for the recording of "Downtown" were assembled in Studio One of Pye Recording Studios and included eight violinists, two viola players and two cellists, four trumpeters and four trombonists, five woodwind players with flutes and oboes, percussionists, a bass player and a pianist.Harrington, Patrick and Bobby Graham, The Session Man; The story of Bobby Graham the UK’s greatest session drummer, Broom House, Monmouthshire, 2004 p. 107

Also playing on the session were guitarists Vic Flick, Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan, as well as drummer Ronnie Verrell, while the Breakaways provided the vocal accompaniment. Bobby Graham was also credited as drummer on the session. Brian Brocklehurst stated in 1995 that he played upright bass at the session. Hatch's assistant Bob Leaper conducted. According to Petula Clark, the session for "Downtown" consisted of three takes with the second take ultimately chosen as the completed track yet, elsewhere, an "extended" version consisting of an instrumental and backing vocal track most likely from a session tape, makes this claim questionable.

Impact Tony Hatch would recall playing the completed "Downtown" track for Pye Records executives, saying: "Nobody knew what to make of it and no release date was set. Then Pye's general manager called and said Joe Smith – Warner Bros.' head of A&R – was in London looking for British material. When Joe heard Pet[ula]'s record, he loved it and scheduled the single for urgent release in the [United] States". When Hatch, surprised by Smith's enthusiasm for releasing "Downtown" in the US, asked if Smith didn't consider "Downtown" to be a "very English record" Smith replied: "It's perfect. It's just an observation from outside of America and it's just beautiful and just perfect."

In the wake of Smith's interest, "Downtown" was released in the UK on 23 October 1964. It entered the UK Top 50 dated 14 November 1964, ending a virtual two-year UK chart absence for Clark; of the ten singles she had released in the UK during that period only one, "Chariot", had appeared in even the lower charts (No. 39 in early 1963). "Downtown" rose to No. 2 UK in December 1964, remaining there for three weeks, kept out of the No. 1 position by the Beatles' "I Feel Fine". Clark was awarded a silver disc by Disc Weekly for the sale of over 250,000 copies of "Downtown" in the UK.

"Downtown" reached No. 2 in Ireland and No. 1 in Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa, and was also a hit in Denmark (No. 2), India (No. 3), the Netherlands (No. 4) and Norway (No. 8).

But "Downtown" had its greatest significance in the reception it was afforded in the United States, where it was released by Warner Bros. in November 1964: after early regional break-outs, notably in Detroit, Miami, and Washington D.C., "Downtown" debuted at No. 87 on the Hot 100 chart in the Billboard issue dated 19 December 1964. Despite the Christmas season typically being the worst time to break a new hit, "Downtown" shot up to No. 41 in its second week on the Hot 100 chart ascending in its third and fourth charting weeks to No. 12 and then No. 5; then after a subsequent single point advance to No. 4 "Downtown" leapt to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated 23 January 1965, retaining that position a further week before being overtaken by the ascendancy of the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". The song became the first No. 1 hit for the year 1965.

Petula Clark thus became the first UK female artist to have a US No. 1 hit during the rock era and the second in the annals of US charted music, Vera Lynn having hit No. 1 in the US with "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart" in 1952. "Downtown" also made Clark the first UK female artist to have a single certified as a Gold record for US sales of one million units. On Billboard's annual Disk Jockey poll, "Downtown" was voted the second best single release of 1965 and Petula Clark was voted third most popular female vocalist. "Downtown" would be the first of fifteen consecutive hits Clark would place in the US Top 40 during a period when she had considerably less chart impact in her native UK, there reaching the Top 40 eight times.

Petula Clark, who had been playing to her French-speaking fans in small venues in Quebec when "Downtown" entered the US charts, swiftly cut non-English versions of the song for the markets in France, Italy and Germany; the absence in each region's language of a two-syllable equivalent of "downtown" necessitated a radical lyric recasting for the versions aimed at France ("Dans le temps"), Italy ("Ciao Ciao", winning the Festivalbar, a juke-box contest) and Spain ("Chao Chao") which climbed the charts to No. 6, No. 2 and – for three weeks – No. 1; "Dans le temps" also reached No. 18 on Belgium's French-language chart. The title and lyric "Downtown" was retained for an otherwise German version which was the most successful foreign-language version, reaching No. 1 in Germany, No. 3 in Austria, and No. 11 on the charts for the Flemish region of Belgium. The Spanish version, however, was not recorded by Petula Clark herself but bis several Spanish artists, among them Gelu.

Mrs. Miller reached number 82 in the US with her version in 1966.

In 2013, Petula Clark re-recorded the song for her album Lost in You, with new arrangements, as a ballad and with a soft voice, giving it a new life.

Popular culture

In the 1978 film Jaws 2, as Police Chief Martin Brody enters the brand new Holiday Inn hotel prior to its grand opening ceremony on Amity Island, an instrumental version of the song (performed by the Amity High School Band) can be heard.

In the 1991 film Flight of the Intruder, Brad Johnson and Willem Dafoe sing the chorus portion of "Downtown" as they are flying their A-6 Intruder back to the aircraft carrier after the unauthorized bombing of the "Sam City" section of Hanoi in North Vietnam.

In the 1993 biographical anthology film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, the song plays throughout "Truck Stop", the fifteenth segment.

In the 1996 Seinfeld episode "The Bottle Deposit", the song is referenced by George Costanza's supervisor Wilhelm when discussing a project Costanza is in the dark about, prompting George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld to analyze the song's lyrics for clues.

The song is on the soundtrack of the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted and is sung in character by Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie.

The song is featured prominently in the beginning of the 2006 Lost episode "A Tale of Two Cities".

The song plays on a loop in a scene from the 2019 film Escape Room.

Immediately before the 2020 Nashville bombing, the song was played from the vehicle which exploded, followed by an audio warning to "evacuate now". Clark released a statement expressing her "shock and disbelief" at the explosion in Nashville.

The song is featured in the Edgar Wright horror film Last Night in Soho performed by actress Anya Taylor-Joy.

The song is featured in the end credits of the series 4 finale of the Amazon Prime series Clarkson's Farm.

The song was used briefly in the 1997 British dark comedy crime film Twin Town.

The song was used in the analog Horror series The Walten Files in Part 5 of the Series.

Charts

Weekly charts Chart (1964–1965) PeakpositionFrench-Canadian Records1Ireland The Irish Times1Luxembourg (Billboard)2The Netherlands (Single Top 100)3New Zealand (Lever Hit Parades)1South Africa (RiSA)1

Year-end charts Chart (1965) PositionUS Billboard Hot 1006

Certifications

Accolades

Downtown '88