songs for broken hearts, no. 50

The main reason I prefer pop to rock is that pop songs tend to make their statements concisely, without a lot of wasted motion. The third and final Move song I’m posting for you tonight is an archetype in this respect, a piercingly romantic bit of orchestral pop that refers back to the Beatles in the interstitial period between Help and Rubber Soul. Beautiful Daughter is one of the finest achievements of Roy Wood’s career. The songcraft is intricate and complex, but also amazingly efficient. I marvel at the way Wood was able to pack so much emotionally intense stuff into less than three minutes. The song’s release was not far enough removed from the 60s to have garnered appreciation as a retro-cool piece of music. Its uniqueness is the result of its weird positioning as a song that’s ahead of its time precisely because it’s regressive. It looks forward to a time when pop will increasingly simulate the past, and it can be heard as a kind of proof of concept for what Wood would do with Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan on the first ELO album. The song also features Tony Visconti on bass, further validating my theory that anything cool you can think of involves Tony Visconti in some way or other…