Whether you’re 2 or 82, you’re stuck with it. It is pop in its purest, most universal form. You’re hearing it in your head right now, I’d wager - “Sugar / Aaah, honey honey …” - because once you’ve heard “Sugar, Sugar” it never leaves you. 1, just ahead of that Beatles song.Īnd “Sugar, Sugar” has never gone away since. , just behind the Beatles’ “Get Back.” In the U.K., it ended up at No. 1 single of the year in the States, according to Billboard. The song, co-written by a young Canadian lad named Andy Kim and Brill Building producer/songwriter extraordinaire Jeff Barry, and first released on by the Calendar Records label, wound up becoming the No. singles chart - for four weeks and eight weeks, respectively - as of Sept. 13, a half-century since it simultaneously did the same on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States and the official U.K. 1 on the RPM 100 in Canada and stayed there for three weeks as of this coming Sept. It will be 50 years since “Sugar, Sugar” hit No. And swiftly send them back to Omicron Persei 8 with the hook lodged in their lizard brains for life, satisfied that now they’ve got it. If the fate of the world hinged on a quick demonstration of the essential meaning and the indefatigable power of pop music, “Sugar, Sugar” is the jam you play for the invaders. The ageless Archies jam is like a master class in precision popcraft jammed into just two minutes and 47 seconds: exuberantly joyful, simple but not too simple and almost debilitating in its catchiness. Why, you reach for “Sugar, Sugar,” of course. It’s an unlikely scenario, granted, but suppose hostile aliens landed on the front steps of the Canadian Parliament demanding to know the meaning of the word “pop” or else they reduce our cities to ashes.