This question is not about “favourite” song - we’ve done that with an excellent response and some great songs. It could be quite personal so I’m prepared to get zero replies
Is there a song which defines “you” in some way, or a pivotal moment in your life?
We spent our honeymoon with this gently echoing around us… in whichever country… wherever… on all the jukeboxes and radios… had us in fits and we still laugh about it…
I’m not sure you were, as a sweet young thing, supposed to be laughing at it.
It was banned on the BBC so quite a long time before I heard for the first time.
As to my own ‘special’ song, I’ll have to have a think. I have plenty of favourites, one, ‘Bad Penny Blues’ was played on Desert Island Discs yesterday, but pivotal? Not sure about that.
JT is definitely “our song” ! and it marks a complete life-change for me (and OH of course)
OH heard Je t’aime… echoing out of my study and has given me a great big hug…
even after all these years, the magic is still here, there… somewhere…
Oh @JaneJones , this song is truly beautiful. Makes me a bit sad though at the moment, seeing all those fine young men…
To cheer myself I have been re-watching Mamma Mia the movie, and singing along. I’m not ashamed to make up any lyrics I forget. I also sing the male parts. Stays as an joyous earworm in my head for the next few days. My husband is beside himself
I don’t find it sad but very hopeful. It’s been with me a few years now as ‘my song’ as have been dealing with issues around nationality, identity and where I belong. So to have something that is effectively a national anthem that doesn’t put one country above another I find uplifting. Joan Baez also sang it (I think you are of age for that to mean something to you😃) on many occasions. Some lovely YouTube clips of flashmobs singing it in Finland to protest re Russia.
Music that I appreciate is so wide-ranging that it’s difficult to pinpoint one particular song. And as you age, for me at least, what you once thought was your song for life, or saved your life, now isn’t and wouldn’t.
The nearest I can get is to songs, not a song, that I strongly believe comforted me at a time when I was feeling really quite low and anxious, for no apparent reason that I could fathom, lasting a full year. A bubble had descended from nowhere and enveloped me, and I could see no further than its inside surface, in my late 60s some years ago now.
Shirley Bassey had recorded her one and only CD, at the age of 74 I think, and she sang in much more mellow tones than she is known for. I saw her in the raw, no makeup, no wig, you wouldn’t have recognised her, rehearsing and finally recording the final version of her CD ‘The Performance’, which I think is her reflection of her life. I must have listened to her CD over and over and over again for months. The words and the mellow tones of her voice, albeit still quite strident, comforted me in some way, although I can’t say why or how, but I owe her one!
But now, how I respond generally to any song I like depends heavily on what mood I may be in at the time.
It is a great cd. My OH is definitely having The Performance of my Life at her funeral. I struggle to listen to “Almost There” still 16 years after splitting up with my previous partner.
Apparently, she’s a great favourite in the gay community and it’s a bit surprising she agreed to sing the words “I don’t want to kiss that faggot froggy” in her song ‘Apartment’ but it’s a more upbeat song, and I believe she’s changed those words now.
Her reported death this month was a hoax – she’s currently 85 years old and going strong, and what a voice at 74 years of age!
If I could take only one of the records on her CD to my desert island it would be ‘The Girl from Tiger Bay’. I’ve grown up with her in a sense, as with other singers during my life time, and she is a girl from Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales. Not that far from my birthplace in London! I’d have her as my big sister if she’d have me!
In a certain frame of mind ‘my song’ is Johnny Winter’s version of 'Memory Pain’. It’s a 12-bar blues with searing guitar from this late, great Texas bluesman.
Serve me right to suffer
Serve me right to be alone
Serve me right to suffer
Serve me right to be alone
‘Cos I’m livin’ with a memory
Of days that’s past and gone.
But then there’s another blues, taking one in quite a different direction, 'Blue Train’ by the supreme John Coltrane and his group.