“Lazy Sunday” by Small Faces

"Lazy Sunday" is Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane's knees-up from Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, the Small Faces' 1968 concept album, and it went out as a single ahead of the LP even though the band didn't want it to. It climbed to number two in Britain and all the way to number one in the Netherlands.

It's pop dipped in old East End music hall, and it grew out of Marriott's running battles with his neighbours. He sings much of it in a cockney accent laid on thick, partly to answer the Hollies, who'd needled him that he never sang in his own accent, then slips back into his usual transatlantic style for the last bridge and the final two choruses. John Lydon later named the Small Faces among his few influences as a singer, and you can hear why here.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.