“‘74–’75” — The Connells

The hardest feelings to create in a song are poignancy and wistfulness. It’s so easy to over-do, straying into self-obsession…or under-do, becoming tedious.

Tiny distinctions separate the sweet spot on poignancy-wistfulness spectrum from the self-obsessed and the tedious on either side. That’s what makes it so hard to create those feelings in your listeners’ minds when you write a song.

One band that got that tricky balance spot on are The Connells who had their one and only hit in 1995 with the poignant, wistful “‘74-’75”.

Bizarrely, a few seconds of “‘74-’75” is being used as the backing music for a TV commercial in the UK at the moment…a commercial for a DIY and home improvement store, of all things.

The bright pastel colours on the visuals and the sharp cuts of the commercial’s director somehow work well with the wistfulness of the backing track, but I’m not exactly sure how…

Away from the world of TV commercials, though, the concept behind both the song and the video for “‘74-’75” is brilliant. The video in particular is a work of awe-inspiring beauty, which we’ll get to in a moment…

“‘74-’75” was written in the mid-1990s, reflecting back on the lives of a group of students who had left high school 20 years earlier, as part of the 1974–1975 graduating class. This is a real high school with real former students, not actors, as you’ll see in the video.