The Partridge Family was a TV show that ran from 1970-1974. It was about a musical family, starring David Cassidy and his real-life stepmother Shirley Jones along with future L.A. Law actress Susan Dey and a young Danny Bonaduce. The show was marketed around Cassidy, who is the son of the actor Jack Cassidy. He quickly became a teen idol.
Jones and Cassidy were the only members of The Partridge Family to perform on their recordings, as Cassidy sang lead and Jones, a veteran of movie musicals Oklahoma and The Music Man, sang backup. Unlike The Monkees, the actors who were not hired to sing didn't have musical aspirations. Top-tier session musicians played on The Partridge Family's songs, including Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn, Louie Shelton and Tommy Tedesco. On their singles and albums, the group was credited as "The Partridge Family starring Shirley Jones featuring David Cassidy.
This was released the same day the TV show went on the air, and 2 months and 4 days later, it was a #1 hit. Over the next few years The Partridge Family scored 6 more Top 40 hits, each release declining in chart position. They were:
"Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted" (#6)
"I'll Meet You Halfway" (#9)
"I Woke Up In Love This Morning" (#13)
"It's One Of Those Nights (Yes Love)" (#20)
"Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" (#28)
"Looking Through The Eyes Of Love" (#39)
This was written by Tony Romeo, who also wrote songs for The Seekers, The Everly Brothers and Richard Harris. It's a very unusual song with a vocal intro (ba, ba ba ba...) that made it challenging for disk jockeys to talk over the song. The harpsichord sound and cathartic chorus helped the song endure long after the TV show went off the air.
While
The Partridge Family was still on the air, Cassidy nurtured his solo career, releasing hit singles including "
Cherish" and "
Daydreamer." His half-brother Shaun Cassidy also had some hits, scoring in 1977 with "
Hey Deanie" and "
Da Doo Ron Ron."
-
This was used twice in the first season of the TV show, with producers taking care not to show too much footage of the band "playing" this song.
The group Voice of the Beehive took this song to #25 UK in 1991. Other artists to cover it include Less Than Jake, Paul Westerberg and Declan Galbraith. The Hip-Hop duo Nice And Smooth sampled it for their song "Hip Hop Junkies."
In 2002, the American teenage singer Kaci recorded a cover, which reached #10 in the UK. Kaci Lynn Battaglia was a child star who by the age of 10 had sung the national anthem at a New York Yankees baseball game and presented a Disney Christmas TV special.
In 1977, a young couple was ambushed by serial killer David Berkowitz, aka the Son of Sam, while sitting in a parked car listening to this song. The scene is recreated and discussed in the 1994 thriller Copycat, starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter.
The ska-punk band Less Than Jake recorded a rapid-fire version for the 1997
Scream 2 soundtrack. They originally wrote the song "Faction" - which ended up on their 2000
Borders & Boundaries album - for the movie, but director Wes Craven asked them to do a cover tune instead. The band
told In Music We Trust in 2001: "We were like, "What the hell?" and did 'I Think I Love You' by the Partridge Family, but we had a great time doing it."
Cassidy was less than enthused by Less Than Jake's punk rendition, even though he didn't actually hear it. "A couple people told me they didn't like it,"
he told Yahoo Music in 2017. "When I heard what they wanted to do with it, I assumed it would be a grunge sort of ear-crunching thing. Not that I don't like some of that stuff, but it's a great melody and it’s a great lyric, so if you want to kill the melody and kill the lyric, why even cut it? Find something else."