#100 Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)

Brandy was 1972 pop song by the band Looking Glass which tells the story the title character, a young woman who works in a bar in a port city and falls in love with a sailor who ultimately decides he can't stay with her because he loves the sea to much. You might be wondering why I love or have even heard of a song recorded 17 years before I was born, well it all goes back to a commercial. In approximately 2001 there was a commercial for a cd called "Once Upon a Song" which contained songs from between 1967-1974 and had some sort of plot. Long story short we purchased the cd and it became a staple of road trips out to visit my sister in Pittsburgh. I loved Brandy's tune which seemed to evoke pacific blue effortlessly, and the imagery,particularly "finest silver from the north of Spain". Songs like Delta Dawn, At Seventeen, Bobby McGee, and American Pie became some of my all time favorites but Brandy holds a special place in my heart because of a later event. During a board game Brandy happened to come up in conversation and a friend of the family asked "Brandy, isn't that the song that was written about a dog?" It isn't, she was thinking of "Mandy" but the joke has lived on, now I can't listen to Brandy without picturing Brandy as a golden retriever, carrying a tray full of whisky on her back, staring loving into the sailor's eyes, and most of all wandering forlornly around the town at night perhaps nosing the trash morosely.