"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" is a rock song written by Randy
Bachman and performed by Bachman–Turner Overdrive (BTO) on the
album
Not Fragile. It was released as a single in 1974 with an
instrumental track "Free Wheelin'" as the B-side. It reached
the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart the week
of November 9, 1974. The single won the Juno Award for
best-selling single of 1974.
The lyrics for the song tell of the singer meeting a "devil
woman" and her giving him love. The chorus of the song includes
the song's famous stutter and speaks of her looking at him with
big brown eyes and [saying] 'You ain't seen nothin yet. B-, b-,
b-, baby, you just ain't seen na, na, nothin yet. Here's
somethin' that you're never gonna forget. B-, b-, b-, baby, you
just ain't seen na, na, nothin yet.'
The guitar riff heard throughout the song's chorus is
proportionate to the riff from Baba O'Riley by The Who. The
riff follows a main pattern of A5, E5, then a D5, while the
riff in Baba O'Riley is F5, C5, Bb5.
"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" was written by Randy Bachman.
In
The Rolling Stone Record Guide,writer Dave Marsh called
the song "a direct steal from The Who," but "an imaginative
one." The chords of the chorus riff are very similar to the
ones used by The Who in their song "Baba O'Riley," and also,
the stuttering vocal is indeed reminiscent of "My Generation."
Randy insists that the song was performed as a joke for his
brother, Gary, with no intention of sounding like "My
Generation." Gary had a stutter, and Randy only intended to
record it once with the stutter and send the only recording to
Gary.
Randy developed the song while recording BTO's third album,
Not Fragile. It began as an instrumental piece inspired
by the rhythm guitar of Dave Mason. Randy says "it was
basically just an instrumental and I was fooling around... I
wrote the lyrics, out of the blue, and stuttered them through."
The band typically used the song as a "work track" in the
studio to get the amplifiers and microphones set properly.
But when winding up production for their third album,
Charlie Fach of Mercury Records said the eight tracks they had
lacked the "magic" that would make a hit single. Some band
members asked Randy, "what about the work track?" Randy
reluctantly mentioned that he had this ninth song, but didn't
intend to use it on a record. He said, "We have this one song,
but it's a joke. I'm laughing at the end. I sang it on the
first take. It's sharp, it's flat, I'm stuttering to do this
thing for my brother."
Fach asked to hear it, and they played the recording for
him. Fach smiled and said "That's the track. It's got a
brightness to it. It kind of floats a foot higher than the
other songs when you listen to it."
Bachman agreed to include the song, but only if he could
re-record the vocals first, without the stutter. Fach agreed,
but Bachman says "I tried to sing it normal, but I sounded like
Frank Sinatra. It didn't fit." Fach said to leave it as it was,
with the stutter.
It is said that Gary Bachman has since lost his stutter.
The first single from the
Not Fragilealbum was "Roll on Down the Highway." It
performed well, but eventually stalled at #14 on the U.S.
charts. "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," meanwhile, was becoming a
hit as an album cut. Radio stations all over the USA were
giving it a great deal of airplay. So much so, Bachman was
embarrassed because he thought it was a stupid song, just
something that he wrote as a joke.
Fach would regularly call him with airplay reports, asking
for permission to release "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" as a
single. Bachman says, "And I refused for three weeks... I was
producer, so I had final say on what went out. I woke up one
day and asked myself, 'Why am I stopping this? Some of my
favorite records are really dumb things like 'Louie, Louie'...
so I said to Charlie, 'O.K., release it. I bet it does
nothing.'"
"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" debuted at #65 on September 21,
1974 and shot to the top of the Hot 100 seven weeks later. It
was the only chart-topper for BTO. (While in The Guess Who,
Randy had penned only one other chart-topper, "American Woman,"
which hit #1 in 1970.)
"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" also holds the record for
falling farthest on the chart before returning to the Top 10.
After falling to #34 two weeks after being in the #1 spot, it
jumped back to #8 for two weeks, largely because of interest in
the flip side, an instrumental called "Free Wheelin'".
On the UK version of the single, the label credits the band
as "
Bachmann–Turner Overdrive". It was kept off the top in
the UK charts by "Lonely This Christmas" by Mud.
Bachman appears in the promo video for Bus Stop's 1998
remake of the song.
The song was always played at the end of the "Smashie and
Nicey" sketch on the British sketch show,
Harry Enfield's Television Programme.
The song was played in an episode of
Ballykissangel.
It was also played on the third season premiere of
Supernatural.
The song is featured in
The Simpsonsepisode
Saddlesore Galactica. At a BTO concert, Homer demands
that they play the song one second after finishing it. When the
band reminds him of this fact, he replies, "Whatever!"
A techno remix of the song was used as the theme song for
ITV Sport's Formula One coverage from 2003 to 2005. The remix
is by German group, The Disco Boys, titled "B-B-B-Baby."
The song is played at the beginning of the movie Studio 54
when the boys are going to club Studio 54 for the first
time.
The song appears on the soundtrack of the film "Joe
Dirt".
The song was, together with U2's "Beautiful Day", used as a
theme song by the US Democratic Party following the US 2006
midterm elections.
During a trip to the US, Margaret Thatcher quoted the song
when talking to an audience with Ronald Reagan. Telling the
audience that "You ain't seen nothing yet". Appears in the CBC
movie: Keep Your Head up kid: the Don Cherry Story, also shot
in Winnipeg, Manitoba.