Procul Harum released their signature track “A Whiter Shade of Pale” on May 12, 1967. The song was included in the U.S. release of their self-titled 1967 debut album. The track hit number one in the U.K. in June of 1967 and peaked at number 5 in the U.S. It was held out of the top spot in the U.S. by songs like Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” and the Young Rascal’s “Groovin.”In 1997, Procul Harum’s Keith Reid opened up about the creative process he used to write the track while speaking with Shine On. “The songwriting process is a funny one, like making a pot. You get your initial idea. Hear I had that line ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale.’ So you’ve got your bit of clay, and you just try to make a pot out of it. And you use your imagination, you shape it and play with it, until you’ve got something that looks like a pot, or sounds like a song,” he told Shine On’s Paul Carter. According to Paul Simpson’s “Rough Guide to Cult Pop,” Reid first developed the famed lyric when he overheard someone say it to a woman at a party.