dion & the belmonts - "my girl the month of may" (from the king of the new york streets boxed set, available for purchase here.)

"my girl the month of may" is unique in the dion canon, and the finest doo-wop / rock hybrid ever recorded. youngsters like the futureheads and tv on the radio have experimented w/ a similar sound but haven't been as successful, and not just b/c dion isn't in those groups. the vocals on "my girl" ring and resound like a clarion call. sure, dion may be joshua, but the walls of jericho wouldn't have come tumbling down by his trumpet alone. combined, the reunited belmonts make a most joyful noise, all in the service of celebrating a girl too wondrous to be of flesh & blood. but she exists! as dion says in the liner notes, in 1963, he married her. the song was written about her, and the extraordinary force and vibrancy of the record must have been enough to have shaken her from her seraphic perch. (forty-plus years later, through as many downs as ups and still together, it must truly be a marriage made in heaven.) the sentiments expressed in the song, and the vigor and commitment w/ which dion & the belmonts approach it, attest to a love, and a talent, not of this earth.