"Maggie May" is a song written by Rod Stewart and musician Martin Quittenton and recorded by Stewart with his band The Faces in 1971. It tells the story of a younger man becoming obsessed with an older woman and was written from Stewart's own personal experiences.
The song was initially released in the United Kingdom as the B-side of the single "Reason to Believe", but DJs became more fond of the B-side and, after two weeks in the chart, the song was re-classified with "Maggie May" as the A-side. However, the single continued to be pressed with "Maggie May" designated the B-side.
In October 1971, the song went to number one in the UK, and simultaneously topped the charts in the United States; the album on which it appeared, Every Picture Tells a Story, achieved the same feat at the same time. To top the UK and U.S. singles and album charts simultaneously is a rare achievement which has been achieved by only a handful of acts other than Stewart, notably The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel and Beyoncé Knowles.
The song launched Stewart as a solo artist. While he has sold millions of records and had countless hits around the world, it is still "Maggie May" for which he arguably is best known. A famous live performance of the song on Top of the Pops saw the Faces joined onstage by DJ John Peel who pretended to play the mandolin. Stewart himself was bemused by the song's success saying, "I still can't see how the single is such a big hit. It has no melody. Plenty of character and nice chords, but no melody."
The song re-entered the UK charts in December 1976, but only reached thirty-one. No other act has released the song as a single, though both Blur and Wet Wet Wet have recorded versions of it, and Melissa Etheridge has performed it in concert as have The Pogues.Tags: Rod Stewart Maggie May (Top Pops '71) tungnq |
