This Can't Be True

Eddie Holman and the Philadelphia Soul Foundations of "This Can't Be True"

Eddie Holman arrived on the Philadelphia music scene in the mid-1960s as a young vocalist whose instrument set him apart from virtually every other singer working in rhythm and blues. His extraordinary falsetto range, capable of soaring into registers that few male vocalists could sustain with any emotional credibility, made him an immediately distinctive presence. Holman's voice carried a quality of heartbroken sincerity that suited the romantic despair of early Philadelphia soul perfectly. When he recorded "This Can't Be True" in 1966, he was still years away from his signature moment, but the record demonstrated with unmistakable clarity that he possessed something rare and potentially lasting.

The song was released on Leopard Records, a small independent label operating in Philadelphia at a time when the city's music infrastructure was beginning to take on the character that would eventually make it one of the defining centers of American popular music. Leon Huff, who would later co-found Philadelphia International Records with Kenny Gamble and reshape soul music for an entire decade, was already working in the city's session world. The broader Philadelphia recording community in the mid-1960s was developing the lush, string-forward production sensibility that would mature into the Philadelphia International sound of the 1970s, and "This Can't Be True" reflected those early tendencies.

Holman had been born in 1947 in Kannapolis, North Carolina, and raised in New York before his musical path led him to Philadelphia. He had studied formally and possessed genuine technical facility, which gave his falsetto work a control that more naturalistic singers sometimes lacked. The falsetto tradition in Black American music ran deep, from the gospel quartet singers who had pioneered the technique in sacred contexts to the doo-wop groups who brought it into secular popular music during the 1950s. By 1966, artists like Smokey Robinson and Curtis Mayfield had demonstrated how the falsetto could carry emotional weight across an entire career rather than functioning merely as a stylistic ornament. Holman absorbed these influences and channeled them through his own genuinely plaintive vocal timbre.

"This Can't Be True" entered the Billboard Hot 100 on January 15, 1966, debuting at number 97. The record climbed steadily through its first several weeks, reaching number 57 on March 12, 1966, which represented its peak position. It spent eleven weeks on the chart in total, a respectable run for a debut single from a young singer on an independent label without the promotional machinery that the larger companies could marshal. The chart trajectory told a story of organic audience discovery rather than immediate commercial explosion, as the record built momentum gradually through radio play in markets where Philadelphia soul already had a receptive audience.

The record's limited national commercial reach in 1966 should not obscure its significance within the Philadelphia music community. Local radio stations and disc jockeys who championed rhythm and blues played a crucial role in breaking new artists, and Philadelphia's radio landscape was particularly fertile for soul music. The city's Black radio community embraced Holman with genuine enthusiasm, recognizing in his voice a quality that transcended the limitations of the production budgets available to smaller independent labels.

Holman continued recording through the late 1960s on various labels, building a catalog and refining his approach without achieving the national breakthrough that his vocal gifts suggested he deserved. He moved to ABC Records and subsequently to other imprints, each time demonstrating the same extraordinary falsetto control. The period between "This Can't Be True" and his eventual signature moment represented years of persistent artistic work that failed to find its commercial moment despite genuine quality.

The breakthrough finally came in 1969 when Holman recorded "Hey There Lonely Girl," a reworking of Ruby and the Romantics' earlier hit "Hey There Lonely Boy" with the gender pronoun reversed. Released initially in 1969, the record became a genuine commercial phenomenon when it was reissued in 1970 and rose to number two on the Billboard Hot 100. That success recontextualized everything Holman had recorded before it, including "This Can't Be True," as early evidence of a fully formed talent.

Looking back at the 1966 recording from the vantage point of his subsequent career, "This Can't Be True" functions as a document of both personal artistic development and the broader emergence of Philadelphia soul as a distinct musical language. The production values of the record, the emotional architecture of Holman's performance, and the fundamental aesthetic decisions all pointed toward a sound that would eventually transform popular music. Holman's pre-breakthrough recordings demonstrate that artistic maturity and commercial timing do not always arrive simultaneously, and that genuine talent sometimes requires years of patient development before finding its moment in the wider culture.