1973 David Cassidy: Daydreamer/The Puppy Song

A double A side, and a single of two halves. On both songs Cassidy is on his own sans lover; on 'Daydreamer' he cares, while on 'The Puppy Song', he doesn't. Or at least he pretends that he doesn't. Something of an iconic single of it's time (I can remember both sides being played almost constantly on the radio), 'Daydreamer/The Puppy Song' is another notch on Cassidy's bedpost of credibility as a 'serious artist'. Admittedly, neither song is Leonard Cohen, but then neither are they Donny Osmond and it's all to the good that Cassidy is confident enough of his own talent not to feel obliged to serve up a relentless diet of sugary love ballads to a sweet toothed audience.

Of the two, 'Daydreamer' works best, largely because Cassidy's flat tone suits the wistful lyrics of the end of love and the hope of a better day ; "Life is much too beautiful to live it all alone" - anybody can relate to that sentiment, even blokes and it welcomes a far wider audience to the fold than your average male teen idol usually manages. On 'The Puppy Song', Cassidy tries too hard to match the sardonic 'sod the lot of you' tone of it's writer Harry Nilsson injected into his own version, but Cassidy's sarcasm comes out as more of a tongue twisting, ill-natured sneer and it makes this a lot less fun than it should be. But even so, the whole is a solid release that's stood up rather better than it has any right to.