My Favorite One Hit Wonders of the 70s: Living Next Door to Alice (#3)

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It has been a long, sad day. It's time to relax with some music. Here's another song in my list of my ten favorite one-hit wonders of the 1970s. #3: Living Next Door to Alice - Smokie I had the 45 of this song when I was a teenager, and my mom fell in love with this song. It remained one of her favorite songs for the rest of her life. That's understandable, because it's an easy song to love. British band Smokie (who had to change the spelling of their name from Smokey because Smokey Robinson objected) was building a following in their native land with songs like "I'll Meet You at Midnight" and "If You Think You Know How to Love Me." This 1977 song was an international smash...asterisk. It did make the top 40 in the US, but peaked at #25 on the charts. That's not exactly a "smash." The storyline is a man who gets a call from a woman named Sally, who informs him that his next-door neighbor, Alice, is leaving town. A "big limousine pulled slowly into Alice's drive" to pick her up. He doesn't know what's going on, but his heart is breaking. He explains that they were childhood sweethearts and had lived next door to each other "for 24 years," and now she's leaving. Now for the great punch line to the song: after Alice leaves, Sally calls back to check on him. She tells him, "Alice is gone but I'm still here, and you know, I've been waiting for 24 years." He doesn't get the hint. While Smokie had other hits in the UK this was their only charted...ahem..."hit" in the US. A little trivia: the lead singer for Smokie was Chris Norman, who got his second trip to the one-hit wonder list in 1978 when he teamed up with Suzi Quartro for the song "Stumblin' In." Living Next Door to Alice Written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman Recorded by Smokie Released as a single, 1977 For more than 24 years I've been loving "Living Next Door to Alice":