My Top 1000 Songs #729: Jenny Artichoke

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.] 

For me, "Jenny Artichoke" is one of the great lost pop songs of the 1960s. British band Kaleidoscope (not to be confused with the US band of the same name) were better known as a psychedelic act, with a couple albums of light pop-psych in the late 60s before briefly pivoting into a more arty prog outfit called Fairfield Parlour (underrated!). But this 1968 single is the furthest thing from psych or prog, a buoyant British Invasion-styled pop song that leans jubilantly into bubblegum. It's not the makings of lasting genius, but rather the sort of lightweight confection that you'd expect to find dropped into a Wes Anderson soundtrack or a candy commercial and becoming an unshakeable earworm that messes up your day. Someone responsible for tracking down magical obscurities ripe for revival is definitely asleep on the job.

Here's Spanish band Formula V doing a Spanish-language version in 1970: