| Daydream | |
| Cover: | Daydream_-_The_Lovin'_Spoonful.jpg |
| Caption: | U.S. picture sleeve |
| Alt: | John Sebastian pretends to lay dead while the other three members of the Lovin' Spoonful pose around him like trophy hunters. Zal Yanovsky stands with a foot on Sebastian while holding a rifle. |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | the Lovin' Spoonful |
| Album: | Daydream |
| B-Side: | Night Owl Blues |
| Recorded: | December 1965 |
| Studio: | Bell Sound, New York City |
| Genre: | |
| Length: | 2:18 |
| Label: | Kama Sutra |
| Producer: | Erik Jacobsen |
| Chronology: | The Lovin' Spoonful U.S. |
| Prev Title: | You Didn't Have to Be So Nice |
| Prev Year: | 1965 |
| Next Title: | Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? |
| Next Year: | 1966 |
"Daydream" is a song by the American folk-rock band the Lovin' Spoonful. Written by John Sebastian, it was issued as a single in February1966 and was the title track of the band's second album, Daydream, released the following month. The song was the Lovin' Spoonful's third consecutive single to enter the top ten in the United States, and it was their best performing to that point, reaching number two. The single's European release coincided with a British and Swedish promotional tour, leading the song to be the band's first major hit outside North America. It topped sales charts in Canada and Sweden, and it was ultimately the band's most successful record in the United Kingdom, where it reached number two.
Sebastian composed "Daydream" in November1965 in an effort to lift his spirits amid a grueling three-week tour of the American South. He was initially inspired by the music of the Supremes, with whom the Lovin' Spoonful was then touring, and the final composition relates to his earliest influences in jug band music. The following month, during a break from their busy touring schedule, the Lovin' Spoonful recorded the song at Bell Sound Studios in New York City. Among the instruments on the finished recording are a honky-tonk piano and four differently textured guitars, one of which uses a volume-control pedal. "Daydream" proved influential, especially among British musicians, directly inspiring the 1966 compositions "Good Day Sunshine" by the Beatles and "Sunny Afternoon" by the Kinks.
John Sebastian composed "Daydream" in November1965, during a 19-day tour through the American South. The Lovin' Spoonful served as a support act during the tour for the American girl group the Supremes, and the two groups traveled together on the same bus. The Lovin' Spoonful generally enjoyed the experience but found the schedule physically exhausting, and Sebastian additionally missed his girlfriend, Loretta "Lorey" Kaye. On a rainy day near the tour's end, Sebastian was feeling particularly depressed and sought to raise his own spirits by writing a song.[1] While riding the bus to their November27 show in Greensboro, North Carolina, he composed "Daydream", finishing the song in around twenty minutes.
Sebastian initially hoped to compose a song like the Supremes' 1964 singles "Baby Love" and "Where Did Our Love Go", both of which he thought had a "straight eighth feel". Employing a "trick figure" he had devised months earlier to play Motown songs on guitar, his arrangement of "Baby Love" for a single guitar transformed into "Daydream". The song employs swing, a rhythmic feel commonly heard in both jazz and blues, but Sebastian later clarified that, like both of the Supremes' songs, the shuffle "[is not] all the way expressed".[2] For his vocal, Sebastian later said he was aiming to sound like Geoff Muldaur, a vocalist in the Jim Kweskin Jug Band,[3] a jug band group which was particularly influential on the Spoonful.
The verses of "Daydream" use a I–VI–ii–V chord progression and the refrain uses IV–i–I–VI. The musicologist Walter Everett writes that because the song's verses always end with half cadences, it means the song never "[achieves] a full-cadence closure" but instead fades out while still feeling incomplete. The Lovin' Spoonful's guitarist Zal Yanovsky later compared the song's melody to that of "Got a Date With an Angel", a 1934 hit by the American jazz musician Hal Kemp, and Paul McCartney of the Beatles described it as a having a "traditional, almost trad-jazz feel".
The author Richie Unterberger connects "Daydream" to the Lovin' Spoonful's jug band roots, writing that its only major difference from 1920s and '30s jug band recordings is its electric arrangement.[4] The journalist Paul Williams similarly writes the song owes much to the jug band tradition,[5] adding that the lyrics, which describe a love-fueled bliss boosted by beautiful weather, seem almost ad-libbed by Sebastian. Unterberger writes that, when paired with the song's bright melody and lyrics, the arrangement morphs the number into a pop song. The author James E. Perone also characterizes it as pop music, and the critic Paul Nelson considers it, alongside the Lovin' Spoonful's other singles, as being representative of folk rock.
Amid a busy TV and live-date schedule, the Lovin' Spoonful recorded most of their second album Daydream over four days, from December13 to 16, 1965. "Daydream" was among the songs recorded during the sessions, which took place at Bell Sound Studios in New York City and were produced by the band's regular producer, Erik Jacobsen.