{"id":162,"date":"2021-05-10T02:03:05","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T02:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/?p=162"},"modified":"2025-08-19T00:40:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T00:40:29","slug":"brandy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/brandy\/","title":{"rendered":"Brandy (You&#8217;re a Fine Girl)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Looking Glass &#8211; Key of A<\/p>\n<input type='hidden' bg_collapse_expand='69ea48aa45ba87014496260' value='69ea48aa45ba87014496260'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-more-text-69ea48aa45ba87014496260' value='Show More'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-less-text-69ea48aa45ba87014496260' value='Show Less'><button id='bg-showmore-action-69ea48aa45ba87014496260' class='bg-showmore-plg-button bg-orange-button  '   style=\" color:#4a4949;\">Show More<\/button><div id='bg-showmore-hidden-69ea48aa45ba87014496260' ><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">The four members of Looking Glass are alumni of Rutgers University, and the Spring 2009 Rutgers alumni magazine carried an article about this song and the band itself. The pertinent part reads:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">&#8220;The band recorded the song seven times before they got it right. &#8216;Brandy&#8217; &#8211; based on the name of (lead singer) Elliot Lurie&#8217;s high school sweetheart &#8216;Randy&#8217; &#8211; tells the story of a musician torn between his love for a life at sea and his love for a barmaid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">Released as the B-side of &#8216;Don&#8217;t It Make You Feel Good,&#8217; the song was overlooked, as was the A-side, for that matter, until Harv Moore, a Washington DC disc jockey took it up as a personal cause. After years of playing covers and their originals at frat parties and bars in the New Brunswick area, Looking Glass was signed to Epic Records by the legendary Clive Davis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">Where the former band members are today: Larry Gonsky RC&#8217;70 (keyboards) teaches music in the Morristown school district; Jeff Grob CC&#8217;85 (drums) after playing with the hard-rock band Starz, returned to school and earned his landscape architecture degree. He works for Stantec, which contributed to the redesign of Route 18. He still plays locally with Richie Ranno&#8217;s All Stars; Elliot Lurie RC&#8217;70 (lead guitar) manages actors and recording artists, including Corbin Bleu of High School Musical fame, in Los Angeles. He worked as an independent music film supervisor and executive vice president of music at 20th Century Fox; Pieter Sweval RC&#8217;70 (bass) played with Starz and the disco band Skatt Bros before dying of AIDS in 192. Royalties are donated by Sweval&#8217;s family to AIDS research.&#8221; &gt;&gt;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">The band was signed by Clive Davis, a famous record executive who has nurtured the careers of many successful artists, including Santana, Billy Joel and Whitney Houston. Davis has a knack for knowing a hit song when he hears one, but he got this one wrong, releasing it as the B-side of their song &#8220;Don&#8217;t It Make You Feel Good.&#8221; Harv Moore, a disc jockey in Washington DC, flipped the record and played &#8220;Brandy&#8221; instead. It became very popular in the DC area, and quickly spread nationwide. This was not typical of the band&#8217;s sound, which caused a problem at concerts. While audiences expected pop songs like this one, the Looking Glass played rock, which left the crowds disappointed. The band broke up less than two years later.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">After the Looking Glass split up, Elliot Lurie moved to Los Angeles, where he worked on a number of films as a music supervisor; his credits include Stuart Little, Alien 3 and Spanglish. He picked up his guitar again in the &#8217;10s when he was summoned by the Yacht Rock Revue, who told him that &#8220;Brandy&#8221; was one of the most popular songs in the genre. After explaining the concept of Yacht Rock to Laurie, they invited him to perform with them, which he did on a regular basis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/div>\n<pre><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: trebuchet ms, geneva, sans-serif; font-weight: 900;\">There's a port on a western bay\r\nAnd it serves a hundred ships a day\r\nLonely sailors pass the time away\r\nAnd talk about their homes\r\n\r\nAnd there's a girl in this harbor town\r\nAnd she works layin' whiskey down\r\nThey say, Brandy, fetch another round\r\nShe serves them whiskey and wine\r\n\r\nThe sailors say: \"Brandy,\r\nyou're a fine girl\" (you're a fine girl)\r\n\"What a good wife you would be\" (such a fine girl)\r\n\"Yeah, your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea\"\r\n\r\nBrandy wears a braided chain\r\nMade of finest silver from the North of Spain\r\nA locket that bears the name\r\nOf the man that Brandy loved\r\n\r\nHe came on a summer's day\r\nBringin' gifts from far away\r\nBut he made it clear he couldn't stay\r\nNo harbor was his home\r\n\r\nThe sailors say: \"Brandy,\r\nyou're a fine girl\" (you're a fine girl)\r\n\"What a good wife you would be\" (such a fine girl)\r\n\"But my life, my lover, my lady is the sea\"\r\n\r\nYeah, Brandy used to watch his eyes\r\nWhen he told his sailor stories\r\nShe could feel the ocean fall and rise\r\nShe saw its ragin' glory\r\nBut he had always told the truth, Lord,\r\nhe was an honest man\r\nAnd Brandy does her best to understand\r\n\r\nAt night when the bars close down\r\nBrandy walks through a silent town\r\nAnd loves a man who's not around\r\nShe still can hear him say\r\n\r\nShe hears him say \"Brandy,\r\nyou're a fine girl\" (you're a fine girl)\r\n\"What a good wife you would be\" (such a fine girl)\r\n\"But my life, my lover, my lady is the sea\"\r\nIt is, yes it is,\r\nHe said, \"Brandy,\r\nyou're a fine girl\" (you're a fine girl)\r\n\"What a good wife you would be\" (such a fine girl)\r\n\"But my life, my lover, my lady is the sea\"<\/span><\/pre>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/robertandrews.net\/songpics\/A-B\/brandy.jpg\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Looking Glass &#8211; Key of A There&#8217;s a port on a western bay And it serves a hundred ships a day Lonely sailors pass the time away And talk about their homes And there&#8217;s a girl in this harbor town And she works layin&#8217; whiskey down They say, Brandy, &hellip; <span class=\"more-button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/brandy\/\" class=\"more-link\">CLICK TO VIEW SONG<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Brandy (You&#8217;re a Fine Girl)<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,117,115,68,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-baritone","category-live-piano","category-live-tenor","category-love-songs","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertandrews.net\/songs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}