The 1960s File Feature
Things I'd Like To Say
"Things I'd Like To Say" — New Colony Six Chicago's Quiet Corner of the Late-60s Pop Scene The late 1960s were a volcanic period in American pop music, with …
01 The Story
"Things I'd Like To Say" — New Colony Six
Chicago's Quiet Corner of the Late-60s Pop Scene
The late 1960s were a volcanic period in American pop music, with psychedelia, soul, and folk-rock reshaping the landscape almost weekly. Into that turbulent era came Things I'd Like To Say, a gentle, harmonically rich ballad from Chicago's New Colony Six, a band that had spent years building a following in the Midwest before finally cracking the national charts in a meaningful way. The track arrived at the tail end of 1968 and carried with it a soft emotional sincerity that stood apart from the harder-edged sounds competing for radio attention at the time.
New Colony Six: From Local Heroes to National Contenders
New Colony Six had been one of the more persistently ambitious bands on the Chicago garage and pop circuit throughout the mid-1960s. They formed in 1964 and spent years honing a sound built on tight harmonies and melodic instincts that owed something to the British Invasion while maintaining a distinctly American emotional directness. By the time Things I'd Like To Say arrived, the group had already released a series of regional hits and had built a loyal Midwestern audience. The band's perseverance on the Chicago music scene gave them a depth of live experience that translated into a relaxed, assured studio performance when they found the right material.
The Song and Its Sound
What makes Things I'd Like To Say enduring is its restraint. The arrangement is spare by the standards of late-1960s pop production, built around an unhurried tempo and a vocal delivery that communicates emotional openness without melodrama. The song speaks in the voice of someone wanting to express deep feeling but finding words inadequate to the task, a lyrical conceit that resonates because it taps into something genuinely universal about communication between people who care for each other. The production quality and harmonic layering reflect a group that had reached a comfortable maturity with their craft, capable of understatement at a time when understatement required considerable discipline.
Chart Trajectory and Reception
The song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 28, 1968, at position 100, and proceeded to climb steadily through the winter. By its peak week of March 22, 1969, it had reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending a total of 16 weeks on the chart. That kind of sustained, gradual climb is the hallmark of a track that built its audience through repeat radio plays and genuine listener affection rather than a promotional burst. Sixteen weeks on the Hot 100 in that era represented real staying power, particularly for a band from outside the major coastal music industry centers of New York and Los Angeles.
The Legacy of a Midwestern Pop Gem
New Colony Six never quite broke into the upper tier of late-1960s pop stardom, but Things I'd Like To Say stands as their clearest statement of artistic identity. The song has continued to find listeners through oldies radio, compilation albums, and the growing appreciation for the depth of American regional pop from that era. Collectors and enthusiasts of 1960s pop have long regarded New Colony Six as an underappreciated chapter in the story of that decade's music, and Things I'd Like To Say is typically the track that appears on any serious survey of late-60s soft pop. The group's Chicago origins also place them in an interesting geographic context, predating by a few years the city's emergence as a major center for soul and funk music.
A Timeless Emotional Register
Fifty-plus years after its chart run, Things I'd Like To Say retains a quiet, dignified appeal. The song's central emotional gesture, the recognition that love sometimes exceeds the capacity of language to express it, speaks across decades with an ease that more elaborate productions often struggle to achieve. New Colony Six delivered something genuinely felt in a period when the pop landscape was crowded with grand statements and sonic experiments. Sometimes the most lasting contribution is the one that knows when to be soft. Put on a pair of headphones and let the harmonies do the rest.
"Things I'd Like To Say" — New Colony Six's singular moment on the 1960s charts.
02 Song Meaning
"Things I'd Like To Say" — The Eloquence of Emotional Restraint
When Words Fall Short
There is a particular human experience that Things I'd Like To Say captures with unusual precision: the gap between what one feels and what one can actually articulate. The song's central theme is the inadequacy of language in the face of deep emotion, a territory that pop music has always claimed but which New Colony Six navigates with particular grace. Rather than simply declaring love in the conventional pop manner, the lyrical perspective turns inward, acknowledging the difficulty of emotional expression as the subject itself. That self-awareness gives the track a thoughtful quality that distinguishes it from more straightforward romantic declarations.
Vulnerability as Strength
The late 1960s were a period when masculine emotional vulnerability in pop was beginning to find wider acceptance, thanks in part to the influence of singer-songwriter culture and the more introspective strands of folk-influenced rock. Things I'd Like To Say participates in this shift. The male vocal perspective throughout the track is one of longing and openness rather than bravado, which placed the song in an interesting position on the masculine emotional spectrum of its era. The track communicates something honest about the experience of caring for someone and not knowing how to say it, a theme that cuts across gender and generation.
Harmonic Language and Emotional Resonance
The musical choices in Things I'd Like To Say reinforce its lyrical themes. The warm, layered harmonies that New Colony Six employs create a sense of emotional depth that words alone might not achieve, as if the music itself is doing some of the communicating that the lyrics acknowledge as difficult. This relationship between musical texture and lyrical content is one of the song's most sophisticated qualities. The arrangement creates a sonic environment of intimacy and vulnerability, wrapping the listener in a sound that feels genuinely private rather than performed for a stadium audience.
Regional Pop and the Authenticity Question
Part of what gives Things I'd Like To Say its particular emotional credibility is the sense that it comes from outside the pop music industrial centers. Chicago pop of the late 1960s carried a certain working-class directness, a preference for emotional honesty over studied cool. New Colony Six's Midwestern roots inflect the track with that quality, making the emotional openness of the lyrics feel less like a stylistic pose and more like genuine communication. Listeners who encountered the song through radio in early 1969 likely responded to exactly this quality, even without being able to articulate why it felt different from similar tracks of the era.
Why It Still Resonates
The enduring appeal of Things I'd Like To Say lies in its universality. The situation it describes, the private struggle to say what matters most to someone you love, is one that most adults recognize from personal experience. Pop songs that locate themselves in these universal, slightly inarticulate human spaces tend to outlast more topically specific material. The song continues to surface on compilations, playlists, and radio programs dedicated to the depth of 1960s pop precisely because its emotional subject has not dated. The communication gap it describes is as recognizable in the streaming era as it was on transistor radios in 1969.
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