How many songs do you know that are instantly recognisable by the opening guitar riff.
'Smoke on the Water', 'Sunshine of Your Love', 'Walk This Way', 'Whole Lotta Love, 'Layla' .. it goes on and on. Even the sax on 'Baker Street' puts the song straight into your head.
How about a laid-back French style accordion played in waltz time.
I bet you can only come up with one, but it's one that everybody knows.
Peter Sarstedt is often dropped into the one-hit-wonder pile. To be fair, he had two. 'Where do you go to ... ' was followed by, IMHO, a better song, 'Frozen Orange Juice', but unfortunately nothing else ever seemed to click for him. There were good songs out there .. 'Without Darkness', 'Step Into the Candlelight' .. and the quirky tongue-in-cheek slightly risque for it's time 'Take Off Your Clothes'.
Sometimes, you HAVE to get a 'Best of ..' or 'Greatest Hits ..' or '20 Golden Greats ..' or some form of compilation because other releases are unavailable or don't cover the good stuff. I do have his second album released in 1969, 'As Though It Were a Movie' but it really adds nothing to the compilation album I got later.
Like Cliff Richard and Englebert Humperdink, Peter was born in India and his ex-patriate family returned to Britain in 1954. Both his brothers also had recordings - younger brother Robin got to #3 with 'My Resistance is Low' in 1976 and older brother Richard had a number 1 hit in 1961 - 'Well I Ask You' - under his stage name, Eden Kane.
Peter Sarstedt never really 'made it' past those early years and basically spent his professional life on the nostalgia circuit.
The amount of names, meanings and symbolism in 'Where Do You Go To My Lovely' has been talked about and analysed for over 50 years now. I'll leave you to check out the reams of stuff out there. In Peter's own words though his reason for writing it mentions one of his, and my, musical heroes ....
“I wanted to write a long, extended piece because I was working in folk clubs and universities, Al Stewart had something that was half an hour long and Bob Dylan’s 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' took a whole side of an album."
Peter left some pleasant if obscure album tracks, a couple of almost-known mainstream songs and a classic, love it or hate it hit that lives on and on and on.
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