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Some songs are identifiable from the very first note, and The Zombies' "Time of the Season" is one of them. That bubbling bassline, that cool vocal sigh, and those smooth lyrics were basically a recipe for a guaranteed hit. In actuality, that wasn't realized until well after the song came out—and the track initially did the exact opposite, sinking the band upon its initial release.
The Zombies had seen commercial success in the early '60s; their biggest early hit came in 1964 with "She's Not There," which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The following year, they got "Tell Her No" to No. 6, while "I Want You Back Again" and "She's Coming Home" came in at No. 95 and No. 58, respectively. Their experimental nature led them to embrace the psychedelic sound of the decade, but their initial venture into the new genre proved extremely disheartening.
According to American Songwriter, keyboardist Rod Argent claimed in Claes Johansen’s book The Zombies: Hung Up on a Dream that vocalist Colin Blunstone had "become very disillusioned with the fact that things weren’t happening anywhere, and I think he just got fed up with everything. Paul Atkinson felt the same, too. Chris [White, bassist] and I wouldn’t break the band up. But we felt we couldn’t carry on without Colin." By the winter of 1967, the band hung it up for good, but not before recording their now-iconic album Odessey and Oracle.
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Odessey and Oracle's Evolution from Flop to Top
The album was, for all intents and purposes, a dud upon arrival. It went virtually nowhere when it was released in the U.S., and frustrated with the lack of momentum, the band decided to officially disband. However, Far Out Magazinereported that musician Al Kooper convinced Columbia Records to give "Time of the Season" a proper push. At first, it went nowhere, but by early 1969, the groovy tune peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“‘Time of the Season’ was the last thing to be written [for the album],” Argent told The Guardian in 2008. “I remember thinking it sounded very commercial. One of my favourite records was George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime;’ we used to do a version of it when we started out. The words in the verse – ‘What’s your name? Who’s your daddy? Is he rich like me?’ – were an affectionate nod in that direction.”
The song itself lives on as a timeless classic, featured in countless movies and television shows to instantly encapsulate the spirit of the late '60s.
