Review

November, 11th 2016

Short melody, even lesser than 2:40 in length, which is sung by The Guess Who – the band with lots of talents in a musical way, as they sing songs starting with pop rock & blues rock, ending with hard rock & psychedelic rock, which is nontrivial.
This piece was one of three best commercial successes of this band – this single reached #1 in Canadian chart, #4 and #6 in the US different charts (including Billboard) and it was one of three gold plates of them. There was a critic that wasn’t impressed by the quality and the depth of the song and write that this single was made exclusively for money (maybe someone from this band offended him, we don’t know), but this was a lonely voice in the darkness – as no one else considered so. This song was officially covered at least once, by saxophonist Dave Pell.
A song, being included in their album ‘Canned Wheat’ of 1969, and as for this year, it was a great success, with over 0.35 million copies sold almost at once. Their first single, before this one, was even more successful, with over 1 million copies sold and that made a huge breakthrough for the Canadian bands, as no one before them in long 10 years weren’t capable of breaking this amount in the sell. This single was written down only in ten minutes and their previous huge success – in 15. But before these became hits in the US (they were all big hits in Canada only), the band had to walk a long way through paying lots of promoters to deliver their oeuvre to the public in the US.
They had other songs that were in the charts, but did not deliver the big success to the performers: these are American Woman (scored 16th in July 1970), Rain Dance (scored 8th as the maximal position in November 1971) and Star Baby (scored 20th in June 1974).
As for the lyrics of this blues-rock song, it is tremendously simple. There is a guy who says that there was a girl, who didn’t love him (but he loved her, in turn) and only laughed at his feelings. This surprised him a lot and he couldn’t withstand it and was very hurt. The end. They were capable of stretching these simple ideas onto 37 lines! Sick, isn’t it? Yes, the song was not too lasting, in the controversy to what usual rock bands do, but 37 lines mean a lot of repetitions, where the most part of them is unnecessary. Indeed, the Laughing is the most frequent word in the song (thereof it was named like this), but we see no deep soul invested in the creation. Now as we know that this piece was made up and written just in 10 minutes, we shall no longer be surprised because of the shallowness of this creation.
As for the band itself, it still lasts officially. They broke up only during a couple of years when they had oeuvre crisis, but after the reunion, they work till now, but we don’t actually hear outstanding pieces from them. Reference: More about The Guess Who and their song "Laughing". The Guess Who in The Montreal Gazette - Jul 21, 1969