You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
| "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" | ||||
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| Single by Bachman–Turner Overdrive | ||||
| from the album Not Fragile | ||||
| B-side | Free Wheelin' | |||
| Released | September 1974 | |||
| Recorded | 1974 | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 3:54 3:31 (7" version) |
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| Label | Mercury | |||
| Writer(s) | Randy Bachman | |||
| Producer | Randy Bachman | |||
| Bachman–Turner Overdrive singles chronology | ||||
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"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" is a rock song written by Randy Bachman and performed by Bachman–Turner Overdrive (BTO) on the album Not Fragile. It was released as a single in 1974 with an instrumental track "Free Wheelin'" as the B-side. It reached the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and the Canadian RPM chart the week of November 9, 1974 as well as reaching #2 on the UK Singles Chart. The single won the Juno Award for best-selling single of 1974.
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Theme [edit]
The lyrics for the song tell of the singer meeting a "devil woman" and she giving him love. The chorus of the song includes the song's famous stutter and speaks of her looking at him with big brown eyes and [saying] 'You ain't seen nothin' yet. B-, b-, b-, baby, you just ain't seen na, na, nothin yet. Here's somethin' that you're never gonna forget. B-, b-, b-, baby, you just ain't seen na, na, nothin yet.'
The guitar riff heard throughout the song's chorus is proportionate to the riff from "Baba O'Riley" by The Who. The riff follows a main pattern of A5, E5, then a D5, while the riff in "Baba O'Riley" is F5, C5, Bb4.
Development [edit]
"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" was written by Randy Bachman. In The Rolling Stone Record Guide, writer Dave Marsh called the song "a direct steal from The Who," but "an imaginative one."[1] The chords of the chorus riff are very similar to the ones used by The Who in their song "Baba O'Riley," and also, the stuttering vocal is indeed reminiscent of "My Generation." Randy insists that the song was performed as a joke for his brother, Gary, who had a stutter, with no intention of sounding like "My Generation."[2] They only intended to record it once with the stutter and send the only recording to Gary.
Randy developed the song while recording BTO's third album, Not Fragile. It began as an instrumental piece inspired by the rhythm guitar of Dave Mason. Randy says "it was basically just an instrumental and I was fooling around... I wrote the lyrics, out of the blue, and stuttered them through." The band typically used the song as a "work track" in the studio to get the amplifiers and microphones set properly.[3]
But when winding up production for their third album, Charlie Fach of Mercury Records said the eight tracks they had lacked the "magic" that would make a hit single. Some band members asked Randy, "what about the work track?" Randy reluctantly mentioned that he had this ninth song, but didn't intend to use it on a record. He said, "We have this one song, but it's a joke. I'm laughing at the end. I sang it on the first take. It's sharp, it's flat, I'm stuttering to do this thing for my brother."[2]
Fach asked to hear it, and they played the recording for him. Fach smiled and said "That's the track. It's got a brightness to it. It kind of floats a foot higher than the other songs when you listen to it."[2]
Bachman agreed to rearrange the album sequence so the song could be added, but only if he could re-record the vocals first, without the stutter. Fach agreed, but Bachman says "I tried to sing it normal, but I sounded like Frank Sinatra. It didn't fit." Fach said to leave it as it was, with the stutter.[2]
Market performance [edit]
The first single from the Not Fragile album was "Roll On Down the Highway." It performed well, reaching #4 on the Canadian RPM charts, but eventually stalled at #14 on the U.S. charts. "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," meanwhile, was becoming a hit as an album cut. Radio stations all over the USA were giving it a great deal of airplay, as Not Fragile was soaring up the album charts. So much so that Bachman was embarrassed because he thought it was a stupid song, just something that he wrote as a joke.[2]
Fach would regularly call him with airplay reports, asking for permission to release "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" as a single. Bachman says, "And I refused for three weeks... I was producer, so I had final say on what went out. I woke up one day and asked myself, 'Why am I stopping this?' Some of my favorite records are really dumb things like 'Louie, Louie'... so I said to Charlie, 'O.K., release it. I bet it does nothing.'"[2]
"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" debuted at #65 on September 21, 1974 and shot to the top of the Hot 100 seven weeks later. It was the only US #1 single in BTO's history. (While in The Guess Who, Randy had penned only one other chart-topper, "American Woman," which hit #1 in 1970.)[2]
"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" also holds the record for falling farthest on the chart before returning to the Top 10. After falling to #34 two weeks after being in the #1 spot, it jumped back to #8 for two weeks, largely because of interest in the flip side, an instrumental called "Free Wheelin'".
On the UK version of the single, the label credits the band as "Bachmann–Turner Overdrive". It was kept off the top in the UK charts by "Lonely This Christmas" by Mud.
Chart Performance [edit]
| Chart (1974/5) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Kent Music Report | 4 |
| Austrian Top 40 | 3 |
| Belgian VRT Top 30 | 6 |
| Canadian RPM Top Singles | 1 |
| Danish Singles Chart | 1 |
| Dutch Top 40 | 3 |
| German Media Control Chart | 1 |
| Irish Singles Chart | 4 |
| New Zealand Singles Chart | 1 |
| Norwegian Singles Chart | 7 |
| South African Singles Chart | 1 |
| Swiss Singles Chart | 5 |
| U.K. Singles Chart | 2 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 1 |
| Preceded by "You Haven't Done Nothin'" by Stevie Wonder |
Billboard Hot 100 number one single November 9, 1974 |
Succeeded by "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" by John Lennon |
Year-End Chart [edit]
| Chart (1974) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Canadian RPM Top Singles | 4 |
| German Media Control Charts | 71 |
| Chart (1975) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| South African Singles Chart | 1 |
| German Media Control Charts | 10 |
| Austrian Top 40 | 12 |
| Australian Kent Music Report | 31 |
| Belgian VRT Top 30 | 82 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 97 |
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ BTO band bio accompanying the album review of Rock n' Roll Nights, at overdoseoffingalcocoa.blogspot.com
- ^ a b c d e f g Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, Billboard, 1988 via "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" from SuperSeventies.com
- ^ Interview track on the album King Biscuit: Bachman–Turner Overdrive (King Biscuit Flower Hour Records, 1998)
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