About The Song
There aren’t many songs more jaunty and free-spirited than “Georgy Girl” by The Seekers.
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From the insouciant whistling which gets us started, through its relentless jollity and up-beat harmonies, “Georgy Girl” defines “jaunty” in the same way Clapton defines “guitar god” and The Smiths define “irredeemable misery”.
And jaunty is hard to pull off. Play it up too much and it’s in danger of becoming twee. Pitch it too low and it starts to feel insipid. It’s a difficult balance.
It helps that you can always hear the sunshine in Judy Durham’s voice, which accounts for much of the positive feel of “Georgy Girl”, but the warmth in the harmonies help considerably too. And let’s face it, it’s not like Judith did her own whistling…
The Seekers were from Australia and in many ways, although I’m not sure either group would entirely welcome the comparison, The Seekers were a bit like Peter, Paul and Mary were in the US. There was a heavy folk influence to their style although their biggest hits may not have been, strictly speaking, folk songs.
“Georgy Girl” was The Seekers’ biggest hit in the US, reaching Number Two in the Billboard charts and winning them a gold record. It made Number Three in the UK and was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar as it was also the theme tune from the 1966 movie of the same name, starring Lynn Redgrave and James Mason.
The songwriting team for “Georgy Girl” is a bit of a surprise, though. Not so much the composer — Tom Springfield, Dusty’s brother and leader of The Springfields, who had a huge international hit with “Island Of Dreams”, wrote the music. So the fact that he can write a good tune may not be entirely unexpected news.