"The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener" is a song written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent which was a 1967 hit for Petula Clark.
After working exclusively with producer/songwriter Tony Hatch following their 1964 breakout collaboration "Downtown", Clark had had her most successful single ever in the spring of 1967 with "This is My Song" a Charlie Chaplin composition recorded by Clark with producer Sonny Burke.
The resultant These Are My Songs album was also produced by Burke with Hatch contributing only one track albeit the one selected as the follow-up single: "Don't Sleep in the Subway". Despite that single's success Clark proceeded to record her next album without Hatch's involvement again working with Burke except for the track "The Cat in the Window (The Bird in the Sky)" which was released as an advance single in August 1967.
"The Cat in the Window (The Bird in the Sky)" at #26 became Clark's lowest charting US single to that date and missed the UK Top 50 entirely, causing Clark to reunite with Hatch for a track to be added to her album as the title track and to serve as a second advance single. This track: "The Other Man's Grass is Always Greener" — which Hatch says contains "a lot of deep thought a lot of philosophy... enjoyed singing those kind of songs" — was musically similar to "Don't Sleep in the Subway" but failed to approach that hit's success, reaching only #31 on the US charts.
Clark would again bypass Hatch for her next single: "Kiss Me Goodbye", which would return her to the US Top Twenty. Conversely in the UK, "The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener" would bring Clark back to the UK Top Twenty - at #20 - for the final time1 while "Kiss Me Goodbye" would just reach #50 effectively ending Clark's career as a mainstream hitmaker.
In Australia, "The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener" reached #30.
Clark's recording of "The Other Man's Grass is Always Greener" was featured in the 1997 film Twin Town playing under the opening credits.
The song has also been recorded by Ed Ames and Vikki Carr.
- 1except for the #10 remix re-issue of "Downtown" in 1988.
Famous quotes containing the words the other, man and/or grass:
“In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“I shall speak of ... how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another.... Of the revulsion that follows one insight and precedes the next.... Of superabundance and surfeit. Of stasis in progress. And of myself, for whom melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)