The American pop singer died yesterday. His passing was eclipsed in the media by the death of Dead or Alive’s Pete Burns, because most of today’s journalists were teenagers when You Spin Me Round was a hit and weren’t born when Bobby Vee was topping the charts around the world with Take Good Care Of My Baby, Rubber Ball, More Than I Can Say, Run To Him, The Night Has A Thousand Eyes and others. That list was done from memory.

Bobby Vee was a pop singer. Pop has never been cool. Pop was what your little sister liked. If you’re serious, you’ll want to be known by one name, preferably the surname, but no one could have called Bobby Vee just Vee. His was a name in itself, like Ellie Mae, or Mary Jean — Americans love anapaestic names.

Bobby Vee was a pleasant looking chap, not handsome, but clean cut with regular features. He had a decent voice and sang in tune. He was a classic early example of the Non-Threatening Boy, every mom’s ideal choice for their daughter’s first boyfriend. The Boy Next Door, assuming you live in a white middle-class neighbourhood.

And he lived up to the dream. He was wildly popular, he married his childhood sweetheart and they stayed together for over fifty years till her death in 2015 (OK, I had to look that one up). He contracted Alzheimer’s and spent the last year of his life in a hospice.

You know, I miss him. I never bought one of his records — I’m far too cool for that — but I looked on him with admiration. He was three years older than me, better looking, a better singer, an object of envy — he was a pop star. I wanted to be a pop star. And I enjoyed his records. I can still sing the five I listed above all the way through and what’s more play them without having to glance at the sheet music. They were simple songs, crafted by the genius of Carole King & Gerry Goffin and others. Bobby Vee was a corporate creation, built by Big Brother to brainwash teenagers like us, crowd manipulation far in excess of anything Soviet Russia could manage at the time.

Then came the Beatles. Boom. Did poor Bobby Vee have another hit? I don’t think so. Certainly not in the UK, although he did have an American #3 in 1967.

RIP Bobby Vee, 1943-2016. You brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of virgins, and there aren’t many men who could say that guiltlessly.

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