August 1972 - Toronto CHUM chart highest position: 18
I hadn't heard this in over half a century when I looked it up for this project. Listening to it again after all this time, my thought was that Kim is such a good pop craftsman that I can't tell whether he is being sincere or he is just practicing his craft. When he sings "Is there a God? I really don't know!" at the end of the song, I don't know whether he is in genuine self-doubt or whether he is looking for a dramatic finish because his professional instincts tell him that the ending of the song needs to be dramatic. Either way, it's very 1970s.
Andy Kim, whose birth name was Androwis Youakim (born 1946), was from Montreal and was the son of Lebanese immigrants. He decided as a teenager that he wanted to have a career in music, so he set up shop in the Brill Building in New York City. Starting in 1968, he had a run of successful singles on the Canadian pop charts, many of which were also successful in the United States. His first hit was "How'd We Ever Get This Way?", which reached #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #9 in Canada. On this and his other early singles, he sped his voice up to make himself sound more youthful.
His biggest claim to fame was co-writing "Sugar, Sugar" with Jeff Barry. This was a hit for the Archies in 1969, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Kim also recorded cover versions of "Baby, I Love You" and "Be My Baby", both co-written by Barry and his ex-wife Ellie Greenwich; he reached #9 on the Hot 100 with the former and #17 with the latter. Because Kim was Canadian and radio stations in Canada had Canadian content requirements to fill, I remember hearing these songs constantly when I was growing up. They've held up reasonably well.
"Who Has The Answers?", released in 1972, was the first of Kim's singles that got airplay in which he used his natural singing voice. It reached #12 in Canada and #18 on Toronto's CHUM chart but did not chart in the US. By 1974, he no longer had a recording contract, so he financed the recording of "Rock Me Gently" himself. It became a smash hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the UK singles chart. It was his last chart success in the US or Britain, though he had a couple of other singles reach the Canadian charts in 1974 and 1975.
In later years, he tried recording as Andy Kimm and Baron Longfellow before more or less dropping out of the music scene. In 2005, he came out of retirement and started performing Andy Kim's Christmas Show annually, with proceeds going to a different children's charity every year. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2019 and became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2023.
Created May 20, 2026.