Comparison

 Here's the other side of that Dear John letter motif.

Cocker sounds more standard-issue now than "Western Union" but at the time The Five Americans were considered pretty usual, while he seemed very edgy, radical. Part of that was the transition from 45s being the center of popular music to long-play albums becoming the sought-after items. You still had to do both, but a single without an album to carry it was considered rather ephemeral. It was repeatedly predicted that singles were going to become unimportant altogether, but like Brazil being forever just about to become a world economic power, that never happened. There were oldies thrown in every hour ("WKBR Good Guy Gold!") and full out oldies shows, or at least oldies hours came in quickly after Sha Na Na* created the combined nostalgia/parody scene. I think that contributed heavily to the persistence of the 45, as the earlier Boomers wanted popular music, but had grown out of needing to know what the Top 20/30/40 was this week. When we sang "Walk Away Renee" in 1973, it was already a nostalgia song. In 1967 there was no Oldies genre, but very soon after, songs from 1967 were considered part of that new genre.

*They were classmates of Bird Dog over at Maggie's Farm at Columbia University.