"Don't Sleep in the Subway" is a song written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent and recorded by Petula Clark. Released in April 1967, it peaked at #5 on the US charts that June. It was Clark's final US top-ten single and the second of two #1 hits on the Billboard Easy Listening chart, following "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love". The song reached #3 in Rhodesia, #5 in Canada, #7 in New Zealand, #10 in South Africa and #16 in Germany. In Australia, it was at #1 on the charts dated 16 and 23 September 1967, marking Clark's final appearance at #1 on an official national chart.
The song was constructed from three different sections of music previously composed by Hatch and changes in musical style from pop to symphonic and then to a Beach Boys-like melody for the chorus. It uses a chord progression most familiar from the baroque piece Pachelbel's Canon.
In the lyrics the narrator advises her sweetheart against storming out after an argument due to his "foolish pride". If he does, he will "sleep in the subway" or "stand in the pouring rain" merely to prove his point. Although in the UK the term "subway" refers to a pedestrian underpass rather than an underground transit system, Hatch employed the term in the latter American sense. According to the song's co-writer Jackie Trent the title lyric was suggested by the 1961-62 Broadway musical Subways Are For Sleeping.
Cited by Clark as her favourite Hatch composition, "Don't Sleep in the Subway" has also been recorded by Matt Monro, Patti Page, Frank Sinatra and Caterina Valente. A Spanish rendering: "No duermas en el metro", was recorded by both Gelu and Los Stop. Siw Malmkvist recorded the Swedish rendering "Sov Inte På Tunnelbanan" in 1970.
The song's title was used as part of a candidate's name in "Election Night Special", a sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus: another of that series' episodes featured Cardinal Richelieu (Michael Palin) lip-synching to Clark's record on the show-within-a-show Historical Impersonations. It also makes a brief appearance in the Malcolm in the Middle episode, "Emancipation" - Lois blasts the song on her car stereo to avoid confronting Francis about his legal emancipation.
Read more about Don't Sleep In The Subway: Charts
Famous quotes containing the words sleep and/or subway:
“in your mind inwardly despise
The brittle world so full of doubleness,
With the vile flesh, and right soon arise
Out of your sleep of mortal heaviness;
Subdue the devil with grace and mekeness,”
—Stephen Hawes (1474–1528)
“In New York—whose subway trains in particular have been “tattooed” with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame—not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.... Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the “haves.””
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. “Cleaning and Cleansing,” Myths and Memories (1986)