"Along Comes Mary," The Association (1966)

A fascinating ode to getting high

Peak: #7 on the Hot 100
Streams: 10 million

Before we get to The Association, I need to talk about Leonard Bernstein. He may be the greatest music teacher in American history, and he was certainly the music teacher with the biggest audience. On his Young People’s Concerts, he filtered music theory and music history through the lens of contemporary rock, and he hosted those concerts on CBS for 14 years.

Yes… that’s 14 years of programming that assumed teenagers wanted to know whether their favorite hits were in the mixolydian or dorian mode. This is wonderful and amazing to me.

On one of those shows, Bernstein used The Association’s “Along Comes Mary” to explain the dorian mode. (He starts about 30 seconds into this clip.)

I encourage you to read the full transcript of what he says. It’s both informative and accessible, and I am happy to know something so interesting about this song.

Or rather, I am happy to know another interesting thing, because “Along Comes Mary” is fascinating.

Granted, on the most basic level, it’s just a really catchy song — a toe-tapper, even. But it has to be. For a pop single to do its job, then it must provide uncomplicated pleasure.

But then there’s so much more. Notice how many sonic layers there are. There are hand claps, electric guitars, and a flute solo. When the chorus kicks in, there’s a woodblock in the percussion section. It almost takes a full orchestra to play this thing.

And what about those harmonies, y’all? The six guys in The Association attain a Beach Boys level of complexity. You have to listen more than once to catch everything they’re doing with their voices.

You definitely have to listen more than once to catch all the words that songwriter Tandyn Almer crams into this thing. This is not a song with a reassuring, repetitive structure like “Every Heartbeat.” The words trip over themselves. The rhymes come fast and furious. Certain lines don’t even scan, but they get forced through anyway. It suggests a narrator whose mind is going a hundred miles an hour.

And the words are kind of weird! Take the opening lines from verse 3:

And when the morning of the warning's passed
The gassed and flaccid kids are flung across the stars

There are so many internal rhymes here and so many syllables, it’s all in service of outré imagery. These sound like the musings of somebody who just smoked a joint.

Because… oh yeah… the song is about getting high! “Mary” is marijuana, and according to our narrator, people could get past a lot of their hang-ups and hypocrisies if they’d just turn on. As noted in this excellent NPR piece about Tandyn Almer, the rapid-fire delivery allows the song to sneak a lot of drug talk onto the radio. To understand what’s going on, you have to listen closely and get the slang. Then as now, this coding helps a song seem cool. Even if you think you’re above “pop music,” you can enjoy this kind of ditty because it’s filled with secrets.

In writing this piece, I’ve been reminded how much I like The Association’s other hits. If you haven’t listened to “Windy” or “Never My Love” in a while (of if you haven’t listened at all), do treat yourself. And keep in mind that while those songs are a blast, they are positively anodyne next to the trippy delights of “Along Comes Mary.”

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