I’m not sure what memory this links to in my head, but every time I go into a seafood restaurant I expect to hear this song. This is definitely one of my favorites from the decade of me. It just feels like a perfect pop song, great production, great hook, interesting story, and the lead singer has kind of a spooky voice, as if he’s in a seaside bar with a hook for a hand, a corncob pipe in his mouth, retelling the story of a girl named Brandy.
The story is that they worked this one hard in the studio and did everything they could to make it a hit, even adding a brass section. But if you listen to this quartet’s two albums, you can hear that they were a very competent unit.
The song, when it’s broken down, is basically this. There’s a bar where lots of “lonely sailors pass the time away” and Brandy keeps them as happy as they can be, peddling “whiskey & wine”. Now, what sailor is drinking wine? As I survey this bar in my head, I imagine a bunch of crusty, barnacle-covered, sunburned seamen staring down at a worn wooden table full of shot glasses and there’s Frasier & Niles in the corner discussing what soupcon their Merlot reminds them of.
Poor old Brandy. All the sailors want you. I mean, what a good wife you would be! But alas her heart belongs to another, whose heart belongs to the sea. Ain’t love a bitch?
I’m also including this truncated version of the band playing live. Check these guys out:
7 Inches of 70s Pop 
W.B.
/ March 10, 2015In all likelihood, the reason why the Looking Glass’ “Brandy” had the subtitle (You’re A Fine Girl” added onto it was because of a minor song that charted at #93 earlier in the year called “Brandy” by Scott English (who’d earlier co-written The American Breed’s earliest hit, “Bend Me, Shape Me”). Alas, when Barry Manilow covered the English composition (pun intended) for his second album in 1974, it became “Mandy” – because of the Looking Glass hit!