On the enduring popularity of Cream's ‘Sunshine of Your Love’: sonic synecdoche of the ‘psychedelic 60s’
Arnold S. Wolfe, Chuck Miller, Heather O'Donnell
Popular Music May 1, 1999 DOI: 10.1017/s0261143000009089 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Commentary Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that 'Sunshine of Your Love' has become a lasting part of shared culture, evidenced by continued airplay, use in sporting events, and appearances in film and television over thirty years. |
Abstract
Few popular songs released over the past thirty years start so memorably: that bass riff, ominous, music for Jaws before there was Jaws, so insistent and unforgiving that in GoodFellas (1990), Scorsese has de Niro do nothing but smoke a ‘square’ and look – icily – off screen while the riff sounds its ten-note pattern. And you know what the combination of de Niro's look, those sounds and that smoke mean: somebody is going to get ‘whacked’. Cream's 1968 hit, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, has been part of the shared culture of the world in which it has sounded for thirty years. In both Europe and America, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ (SYL) continues to receive airplay today. At high school and college sporting events across the US, pep bands continue to play it (Dan Farris, Assistant Director of Bands, Illinois State University, personal communication, 5 March 1997). A band played it, too, in a 5 April 1997 episode of the NBC television network series, Profiler.