What makes a song a number one hit? It's a question that musicians (or, perhaps more accurately, music executives) have pondered for decades. And the truth is, many times the success of a certain song even takes the people who made it by surprise.
Such was the case with "What a Fool Believes" by the Doobie Brothers, which hit the top of the charts in 1979. As singer Michael McDonald told The Guardian, he wrote the song with Kenny Loggins, and they both recorded different versions of the song around the same time. Loggins released his take on the song several months before the Doobie Brothers...but it wasn't a huge success. Meanwhile, the Doobie Brothers were struggling to get their own version right.
"The song was always kind of an enigma," McDonald said. "We tried everything in the studio. We got so desperate that producer Ted Templeman actually wound up playing drums along with our drummer. By that point, there were boxes of takes for this one song piled as high as the ceiling."
Eventually, Templeman got fed up, as McDonald recalled.
"He got off the drums, walked into the control room and started cutting the tapes into individual sections right there," McDonald said. "Back then, you were really going for broke when you physically cut the tape. But that’s what we used to make the record."
Templeman shared his own memories in the same interview.
"We recorded the track over and over and it just wouldn’t come together," he explained.
"When the song was finished, I still didn’t think it was right," Templeman continued. "I went over to Warner Bros and into a meeting with all these hitmakers and old pros. 'This thing is a piece of crap,' I said, 'but I’ll play it for you anyway.' I was just about ready to throw it away. And they said: 'Are you crazy? That’s great!' Even when we went to collect the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1980, I was thinking: 'How did this happen?'"
Not only did "What a Fool Believes" become a chart-topping, Grammy-winning sensation, it's considered the Doobie Brothers' biggest hit to this day.
"It really captured the public’s imagination and developed a life of its own," McDonald said, adding, "I think it came out of nowhere and stylistically wasn’t like anything we’d done before or like anything anyone else was doing at the time."
Decades later, Yacht Rock lovers everywhere would have to agree.
Related: 1973 Glam Rock Hit Went Straight to the Top of the Charts 53 Years Ago Today
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