February 9, 2024      —–     Chart #232

Hello Music Friends,

Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Guess what era we are in this week. The 70’s of course. “Squeeze Box” is a song by the Who from their album The Who by Numbers. Written by Pete Townshend, the lyrics are couched in sexual double entendres. Unlike many of the band’s other hits, the song features country-like elements, as heard in Townshend’s banjo picking.

“Squeeze Box” was a commercial success, peaking at No. 10 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 16 in the US Billboard Hot 100. The song is also their only international number-one hit, reaching No. 1 in Canada, and No. 2 on the Irish singles chart.

“Squeeze Box” was originally intended for a Who television special planned in 1974. In the planned performance of the song, the members of the band were to be surrounded by 100 topless women playing accordions. A demo of the song featured a farfisa organ-based arrangement, as well as bluegrass banjos. Authors Steve Grantley and Alan Parker compared this early version to The Beatles’ 1968 song, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”. This demo appeared on Pete Townshend’s demo collection, Scoop.

“Squeezebox” is a slang term for accordions and related instruments. The song’s lyrics consist mostly of sexual innuendo. Although Pete Townshend later said that the song originated as a dirty joke, he said that there was no double entendre, claiming “It’s not about a woman’s breasts, vaginal walls, or anything else of the ilk.” The Who’s bassist, John Entwistle also commented on the lyrics, saying “I dunno. Most songs have double meanings or no meaning at all. ‘Squeeze Box’ isn’t that dirty. It doesn’t say ‘tits.’” Lead singer Roger Daltrey, however, acknowledged the double meaning, saying, “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of ‘in-and-out,’ mate!”

“Squeeze Box” was released as the first single from The Who by Numbers in 1975 in America and 1976 in Britain. It became an international hit, becoming the band’s first Top 10 hit in Britain since 1972’s “Join Together”. Despite this, Pete Townshend did not think highly of the song, and was astonished at its chart success.

“I had bought myself an accordion and learned to play it one afternoon … The accordion gave the song a polka-esque rhythm, and the lyrics, which I wrote for fun, were intended as a poorly aimed dirty joke. I had no thought of it ever becoming a hit but amazingly recorded by the Who, to my disbelief. Further incredulity was caused when it became a hit for us in the USA.”

Roger Daltrey, however, spoke positively of the song, praising its simplicity. “It’s so refreshingly simple. An incredibly catchy song. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is and I love it for that.”

The Who live:  https://youtu.be/ZXoxH8HI7z8?si=EIAxSKsNNRNcTJg0

The song is written in three stanzas using the same closing refrain of “Mama’s got a squeeze box/ Daddy never sleeps at night”. The content of each stanza builds on the innuendo of the colloquial phrase of referring to a romantic partner as being some variation of being a “main squeeze” or simply referring to a boyfriend or girlfriend as a “squeeze”. The first stanza is relatively ambiguous and introduces the main rhythm and beat of the song followed by the first instance of the refrain. The second stanza becomes more explicit with the romantic couple ignoring their pets and even their children when their nighttime activity commences stating, “‘Cause she’s playing all night”, followed by the refrain. The third stanza becomes relatively undisguised in its use of metaphor referring to the couple’s romantic activity as “in and out and in and out”, followed by the closing instance of the refrain. The original version of the end of the song included the intonation of the words, “She goes, squeeze me, come on and squeeze me, Come on…”, as the music faded out.

Well, I bet this song brings up a few memories of your own. I know it does for me. Enjoy this flash from the past and play along.  

Keep Rockin’,