‘Songs
do have a way of communicating feelings, emotions and thoughts
that cannot be expressed by mere words. Regardless of what
the feelings are whether sad, happy or frustrated,, I’m
sure you could find a song that could closely fit the moment’
I was driving with my kids in the car one day. I picked
a CD at random from my collection, slipped it in and started
to sing the songs. I was almost partway when my daughter
asked me, “Ma, how come you can sing almost all the songs
on the CD? Aren’t they old songs?” I just smiled.
I’m sure many of you could also do the same. You see, I
grew up with parents who sang oldies. Well in their time,
they weren’t actually oldies, they were the genre. Now they’re
conveniently called oldies so we can hold on to our egos
and feel forever young.
I remember Mum telling me about Dad’s singing. Dad used
to sing ‘No More’, an Elvis number that went something
like this:
‘No more do I see the starlight caress your hair,
No more feel the tender kisses we used to share,
I close my eyes and clearly my heart remembers
A thousand goodbyes will never put out the embers.
Darling I love you so
And my heart forever
Will belong to the memory of the love that we knew before
Please come back to my arms we belong together
Come to me let’s be sweethearts again
And then let us part no more.’
Dad used to sing this song at talentimes when he was young
and according to Mum, he used to win too.
So, Mum thought that it would be a good idea to see Dad
sing but it was far from a good idea. According to Mum,
when Dad saw her in the audience, he panicked, got nervous
and forgot the lyrics! But Mum did say that Dad’s voice
was more than okay, soothing to the ear, her ears and that
he didn’t sound like a wounded moose...
So you can imagine the fun I had singing old songs including
P. Ramlee numbers with Dad while growing up. We didn’t even
need karaoke, we just sang our hearts out, bad pitching
and all! Well, we weren’t that bad.
One of my favourites is ‘Put Your Head On My Shoulder’
by Paul Anka. It goes something like this:
“Put your head on my shoulder, hold me in your arms,
baby
Squeeze me oh so tight, baby. Show me that you love me too
Put your lips next to mine, dear, won’t you kiss me once,
baby
Just a kiss goodnight, baby. You and I will fall in love”.
Listening to Anka’s romantic crooning, you could melt. I
did and still do... yes a romantic at heart, ‘tis I. There
are a few other songs that would bring memories of yesteryears.
I’m sure your parents could tell you a few stories while
going down memory lane with these songs.
Some familiar ones are like ‘Never On a Sunday’ by
Johnnie Tillotson, ‘All Kinds of Everything’ by Dana,
‘It’s Now or Never’ by Elvis Presley, ‘When Will
I See You Again’ by The Three Degrees and of course,
who could forget ‘Love Story’ by Andy Williams. Another
singer who could liquefy your heart.
An equally powerful song is Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’.
When talking about the trails and successes of life, this
song comes to mind.
This is also the same song that was featured in ‘Happy Feet’,
an animated movie from Warner Brothers that won the best
animated feature at the 79th Academy Awards.
But, in the movie, Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ was sung in
Spanish by Robin Williams. And knowing Williams, it came
out with hilarious results. Williams plays a head honcho
for the Adelie Amigos, a group of half-sized penguins which
befriends Mumble, played by Elijah Wood, an Emperor penguin
who doesn’t sing, but tap dances!
An old number ‘Boogie Wonderland’ has been changed
to an upbeat mambo number to accommodate the tap dancing
sequence. If you have never seen penguins’ tap dance, this
is your chance to see how the animators did a good job combining
real life penguin movements and well-choreographed tap dancing
steps.
There are also other songs like ‘Only You’, ‘Unchained
Melody’, ‘You Don’t Have To Be Beautiful’ and
‘You Leave Me So Lonely I Could Die’ sung by Hugh
Jackman (who plays Memphis) with Nicole Kidman who plays
Norma Jean. Fancy that!
So now it’s a trend with movie makers to use these old songs
in new movies. Spiderman 3 for instance, used tracks like
‘Do the Twist’ and ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on
My Head’.
One other reason why movie directors/producers choose these
so-called oldies is to cater to the older generation of
movie-goers while the movie itself caters to the younger
audiences. This development not only helps the movie to
transcend age boundaries but also introduces the youth bands
to the old music genre.
And looking at the ratings and profits that these movies
made, this formula seems to work nicely. So it wouldn’t
surprise me if there will be more songs re-introduced and
re-mixed.
Songs do have a way of communicating feelings, emotions
and thoughts that cannot be expressed by prose. Regardless
of what the feelings are whether sad, happy or frustrated,
I’m sure you can find a song that could closely fit the
moment.
I remember singing ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ by The
Platters, (another favourite oldie of mine) with my tutor
at the old college where used to I work. Working conditions
were unbearably stressed. On some days when we were all
frazzled out, we used to ‘hide’ in the radio studio and
listen to songs.
We sang an assortment of songs to de-stress ourselves.
‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ was one of the songs we
used to belt out. We just sang to release our tension. Looking
back, it was quite fun, but at that moment in time, all
we wanted to do was just cry.
But even now, after all that, and with everything that’s
happening, smoke does get in my eyes sometimes...
