The Story Behind Barbara Fairchild’s Emotional Support One-Hit Wonder From 1972

Sometimes life is just too much to bear. Sometimes you look around, and everything is in shambles. Job? That’s gone. Friends? They’re absent. Loved ones? Who are they again? It can feel almost impossible to continue to trudge on from day to day. That’s just what we wanted to explore below. We wanted to dive into a song that rose up the charts and expressed the idea that life, well, is just too much to deal with sometimes. Indeed, this is behind the emotional support 1972 one-hit wonder from Barbara Fairchild, “Teddy Bear Song”.

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Love Hurts

Some songs just admit it. They get their motive out right away—love hurts. They tell you to your face about the woes and troubles with romance. But not every track aims to be so direct. Some would rather show and not tell, as the old saying goes.

That’s just what singer Barbara Fairchild does on this tune. She doesn’t say outright that she wishes she could shed the shackles of what it’s like to be human. No, she doesn’t say she would rather never love again. She doesn’t say she wants to shed her skin.

Instead, she says she wishes she were a teddy bear. Simple as that! Fairchild twists the sorrow around and puts it on its studded head. She doesn’t thrust the listener into the bleakness of depressing lyrics. Rather, she sings a chipper, pleasant song about a toy.

While the opening of the song sounds so sweet, there is really so much else going on. Indeed, the country star sings, “I wish I had button eyes and red felt nose / A shaggy cotton skin and just one set of clothes / Sittin’ on a shelf in a local department store / With no dreams to dream and nothing to be sorry for.“

Teddy Bears Sell

Fairchild earned real success with her stuffed bear song. Some might think such a modest track might not have raced up the Billboard charts, but this tune proved that teddy bear songs sell. Indeed, “Teddy Bear Song” hit No. 1 on the Hot Country Singles chart some three months after its release (wow!).

The track also clocked in at No. 32 on the Hot 100 some three months after that in June, making it into the Top 40 of the vaunted pop charts in the summer of 1973.

Months later, the offering garnered another big nod in the form of a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Female in 1974 (Olivia Newton-John took home the prize for “Let Me Be There”).

But Wait, There’s More

After the success of “Teddy Bear Song”, Fairchild decided that subverting childhood themes in her tracks was her lane to future successes, too. She bet on the fact that the metaphors would elucidate her points more clearly than more traditional subjects.

So, she continued the trend with songs like “Kid Stuff” (see above). But while none of her releases enjoyed the same success as the original stuffed bear track, country fans could always turn back to their favorite stuffed bear track and remember what it was like. That’s never too much to bear.

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns