For this week, Jim’s post Without Warmth tells us that the challenge for Song Lyric Sunday is to play songs that include the lyrics “cold, frozen, frigid or icy”, suggested by Nancy aka The Sicilian Storyteller, in her ongoing run of great ideas. For once, I didn’t have to look too far for this, as I had used this as a theme for one of my Tuesday Tunes posts just over three years ago. Rest assured, I’m not repeating the whole post, though. I’m just going with my two favourites, and there will be no Foreigner in this one: too obvious! One of my choices may be known to you but I’m guessing that the other won’t, unless you remember it from when I played it back then.
Here’s my lead song for today:
I’ve seen The Chicks in concert, back when they were still Dixie, and they were superb. This is one of my favourites of theirs, and it tells a story of heartbreak in its lyrics:
The moon is full, my arms are emptyAll night long, I’ve pleaded and criedYou always said the day that you would leave meWould be a cold day in July
Your bags are packed, not a word is spokenGuess we said everything with good-byeTime moves so slow, promises get brokenOn this cold day in July
Sun’s comin’ up, comin’ up down on Main StreetChildren shout as they’re running out to playHead in my handsHere I am standing in my bare feetWatching you drive awayWatching you drive away
Said that we were gonna last foreverYou said our love would never dieIt looks like springAnd it feels like sunny weatherBut it’s a cold day in July
Oh, sun’s comin’ up, comin’ up down on Main StreenChildren shout as they’re running out to playWhoa, head in my handsHere I am standing in my bare feetWatching you drive awayWatching you drive away
The moon is full, my arms are emptyAll night long, how I’ve pleaded and criedYou always said the day that you would leave meWould be a cold day in JulyHere comes that cold day in July
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Richard C Leigh
Cold Day in July lyrics © Emi U Catalog Inc., Ides Of March Music
Cold Day In July was on Fly, their second album on a mainstream record label, following some previous low key releases. It came out in August 1999 and was a US #1, and got as far as #38 here: it comprised 13 tracks, of which 8 were released as singles, including this one. That single only reached #65 in the US, though, and didn’t chart here in the UK – I guess anyone who wanted it already had the album by then, as that single release wasn’t until May 2000.
For today’s second song I’m doing something which I have occasionally tried in Tuesday Tunes but not before for Song Lyric Sunday: I’m playing you a song in another language. I think you’ll see why when you watch this beautiful video:
In case you were wondering where any of the keywords come into this, ‘kalte’ is the German word for ‘cold.’ Faun have become one of my favourite bands since I discovered them five or six years back, thanks to the accuracy of YouTube’s algorithm for recommendations, which has served me well down the years. They make beautiful music, and aren’t afraid to push the barriers with their videos: a couple of them border on the very naughty! Diese Kalte Nacht (this cold night) is a track from their 2013 album Von Den Elben (of/from the elves), which reached #7 in the mainstream German albums chart – quite an achievement for a band that describes its music as being ‘pagan folk’ in style. It is an adaptation of a traditional song, known usually as either Cold Haily Rainy Night or Cold Haily Windy Night. I first heard a version on Steeleye Span’s second album, Please To See The King, but it has been covered many times by folk musicians from all over the place and not just in English, as this shows. The song is about a young man pleading with his love to let him in out of the freezing cold, though the English lyrics imply another meaning of the phrase ‘let me in’ (spoiler alert – she does). Much though I’m a fan of Steeleye, I shared this version as I think the vocals and musicianship are gorgeous, and the setting of Marienburg Castle, in Lower Saxony, Germany, is perfect in creating the ambience. There are several lyric videos which give an English translation of this, with varying degrees of accuracy (from the poor to the awful) but they lose the beauty of the video. There are several attempts at translations on the web, too, if you feel the need to try them, but don’t be surprised at how we cope with other languages: when I typed in ‘nacht’ autocorrect gave me ‘nacho’ instead! The song is a popular part of Faun’s repertoire, and the video is approaching 20m YouTube views. When I opened it up there today I was a little surprised to see that the comment I left several years ago is at the top of that section!
That’s it from me for today, and I hope I’ve broadened your musical horizons a little. You don’t necessarily have to understand all of the words to appreciate the beauty of a performance, do you?
See you again on Tuesday? 😊
