1955 Jimmy Young: Unchained Melody

A veritable warhorse of a song covered by the great and the good since 1955, the Righteous Brothers' version ten years later may be the benchmark but Jimmy Young's version was one of the first off the blocks. Young can carry a tune, but he needs both hands to do it and all emotion is sacrificed to a strident attention to diction and pronunciation; Young doesn't milk the lyric, but nonetheless he seems in a hurry to be done with it too. Maybe it's unfair to compare it to such a familiar version, but instead of the slowburning intensity of the RB's, Young's take is saddled to a rickety musical backing that never quite seems to know what type of song it wants to be. The end result is a plate of boiled to death food served up on a Formica topped table in a British Restaurant - all nicely functional but plain as hell.