Confess

Album: A Golden Celebration (1947)
Charted: 12
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Songfacts®:

  • This was Patti Page's first hit song and a groundbreaking recording in the field of multiple voice technique, as it was the first recording with overdubbed vocals. It changed the recording industry forever, but the innovation came about only because they couldn't employ any background singers.

    There was a music industry strike at the time, which meant there were no singers around to provide harmony, so Mercury Records sound engineer Bill Putnam figured out a way to overdub Page's own vocals.
    He used a revolutionary overdubbing technique that permitted Patti to be her own chorus and echo. Page recalled in an interview in USA Today: "It wasn't anything I knew was innovative. We just said, 'Why can't we do it?' And we did it. Sometimes things happen like that."
  • Recorded on December 3, 1947, the song was the first of 80 pop chart hits for Page. Her final pop hit was "Little Green Apples," which peaked at #96 in 1968. Her last hit on any tally was "My Man Friday" in 1982, which reached # 80 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
  • The song was originally intended to be a duet and was later recorded as such by Doris Day and Buddy Clark.
  • The White Stripes recorded an updated version for their 2007 Icky Thump album. Their version reached #30 on the UK singles chart.

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