The Tide Is High is fated to be remembered as a cover version. It's been a No 1 twice in the UK – for Blondie in 1980 and Atomic Kitten in 2002 – and recorded or adapted by plenty of other acts, including Gregory Isaacs, Kardinal Offishall and Billie Piper. Horrifically, you can hear its chord pattern repeated in Bryan Adams's Reggae Christmas, a song that makes Morrissey's 1985 statement that "reggae is vile" seem well reasoned and entirely rational.

The Tide Is High belongs, though, to John Holt. He wrote the song in 1967, and recorded it with his vocal trio, the Paragons. It's a gloriously innocent recording – it seems to come from a different era from the pop records coming out of the US at the time, reminiscent of the street corner doo-wop of a generation before. Holt's voice is pleading and plaintive, imploring the girl he wants to notice him – he's not the kind of guy who gives up just like that. Oh no.

The star of the original recording, though, is one "White Rum" Raymond. It's Raymond playing the violin that weaves its way through the song, lending it both melancholy and – simultaneously – the faint fairground air that stops it being self-pitying. (Interestingly, from roughly the same period, another great black pop record used a violin to save itself from cliche and add drama – Frankie and the Classicals' northern soul hit, What Shall I Do?)

There's a freshness to The Tide Is High that seems unquenchable. It's so simple, so straightforward – lyrically and musically – that it seems always to have existed: we all recognise the sentiments, put plainly enough to be comprehensible to anyone, but phrased smartly enough not to become indistinguishable from countless other songs about unrequited love. In another 10 years or so it will be covered once more, become a huge hit, and a generation of people will ask: "Wasn't this an Atomic Kitten song?"