Kites Are Fun

"Kites Are Fun" was a single in 1967 on Project 3, with "The Proper Ornaments" on the B-side, produced by Enoch Light and running 2:41 to 2:42. Wikipedia reads the kites as youth and innocence, children playing outdoors away from adults, and gives the key as E major going to A major at 138 BPM; we found no artist quote about its meaning. PopMatters's Dylan Nelson called the arrangement quiet and precise, with hushed falsetto harmonies and flute, and paradoxically radical. Billboard (October 28, 1967) called it an interesting rhythm item by a unique pop group, and Cash Box a cute, bright and breezy glider.

It reached 114 on Billboard's Bubbling Under chart (December 30, 1967) and 33 on the Easy Listening chart (January 6, 1968), the group's only charting single; Sandy says it reached number one in Buffalo and cracked the Top 100 but never the Top 40. Covers include Tony Mottola and the Groovies (1968), Tomorrow's World (1997) and the Parallelograms (2007) on Yo Gabba Gabba!; it was the theme of the Irish comedy Your Bad Self (2010), and gained some TikTok traction in April and May 2020. A London band took the name the Proper Ornaments from the B-side. Setlist.fm holds only two Free Design shows, both with empty setlists, and we cannot tell whether our upload is the single or album mix.