Laughing

A #1 hit in their native Canada, this song was written by Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings during their brief collaboration together in The Guess Who. The name of the band was actually a marketing gimmick that backfired. Their label Quality Records released their first hit single ("Shakin' All Over", #1 in Canada) credited only to "Guess Who?" in an attempt to build a mystique around the band. The idea was to evoke in the fans' minds the suspicion that this might be an assembly of more famous singers playing incognito. The real name of the band was "Chad Allan & The Expressions," but radio station DJs continued to refer to them as "The Guess Who" when playing subsequent singles by them - so they were stuck with it.
While the team-up of Bachman and Cummings was short-lived, as Bachman split a year later citing conflicts with his Mormon beliefs, they have since reunited as either The Bachman-Cummings Band or, under the name of their backing band, The Carpet Frogs.

This song took about 10 minutes to write. Speaking with The Edmonton Journal in 1969, Bachman said: "We find that if we have to sit down and ponder, it doesn't happen."

Rolling Stone's review of the album Canned Wheat sniffed that it "would be even more pleasurable if they didn't sound a mite too much like the Airplane (instrumentally) and the Springfield (vocally and often instrumentally)."