“Pretty Ballerina” by The Left Banke

Michael Brown wrote "Pretty Ballerina" and the Left Banke put it out as a single in December 1966, the follow-up to "Walk Away Renée". Like that one, it was written about Renee Fladen, the girlfriend of guitarist Tom Finn and the girl Brown couldn't stop pining for.

Brown plays the piano and Steve Martin Caro sings, and John Abbott's arrangement dresses it in chamber finery: Harry Lookofsky on violin, Seymour Barab on cello, and George Marge's oboe floating over the string quartet in the instrumental break before the music halts and slides back into the refrain. Its melody leans on the Lydian mode, making it one of the earliest pop tunes to go there, ahead of the Beatles' "Blue Jay Way". Bill Jerome, Steve Jerome and Lookofsky produced it for Smash, and it went to No. 15 on the Hot 100 and No. 4 in Canada.

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