Saturday 4 December 2021

Dance Monkey

"Dance Monkey" is a song by Australian singer Tones and I, released on 10 May 2019 as the second single (first in the US) from Tones and I's debut EP The Kids Are Coming. The song was produced and mixed by Konstantin Kersting.

"Dance Monkey" topped the official singles charts in over 30 countries and peaked within the top ten of many others, including the United States. When it hit number four in the US, it became the first top-five hit solely written by a woman in over eight years.

Upon reaching its tenth week at the top of the Australian Singles Chart, "Dance Monkey" broke the record for the most weeks at number one on the chart by an Australian artist. In November 2019, during its sixteenth week at number one, it broke the record for the most weeks at number one in Australia's ARIA chart history (1983–present), previously held by Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" (2017). "Dance Monkey" also holds the record for the longest time at number one across Australian singles charts, with 24 weeks (including 21 consecutive weeks from August to late December 2019).

At the ARIA Music Awards of 2019, Tones and I was nominated for eight awards, winning four. Tones won ARIA Award for Best Female Artist and Breakthrough Artist while "Dance Monkey" won Best Pop Release and The Kids Are Coming EP won Best Independent Release. At the APRA Music Awards of 2020, "Dance Monkey" was nominated for Song of the Year, Most Performed Australian Work of the Year and Most Performed Pop Work of the Year, winning Song of the Year. At the AIR Awards of 2020, the song won Independent Song of the Year. In May 2020, "Dance Monkey" was announced as the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 International Songwriting Competition.

In the United Kingdom, "Dance Monkey" broke the record for the most weeks spent at the top of the UK Singles Chart by a female artist when it remained at the top of the chart for an eleventh week. The previous record of ten weeks was held jointly by Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" in 1992–1993 and "Umbrella" by Rihanna and Jay-Z in 2007.

Tones made her debut on US television on 18 November 2019 with a performance of the song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. On 10 December 2019, Tones appeared as a guest performer again in the US on The Voice. The following week, "Dance Monkey" entered the US Billboard Hot 100 top ten for the first time at number nine, and later peaked at number four on the chart. 
To download the easy alphanotes and chords, look here. Enjoy!
Lyrics
They say oh my God I see the way you shine
Take your hand, my dear, and place them both in mine
You know you stopped me dead while I was passing by
And now I beg to see you dance just one more time
Ooh I see you, see you, see you every time
And oh my I, I, I like your style
You, you make me, make me, make me wanna cry
And now I beg to see you dance just one more time
So they say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh
I've never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you're done I'll make you do it all again
I said oh my God I see you walking by
Take my hands, my dear, and look me in my eyes
Just like a monkey I've been dancing my whole life
But you just beg to see me dance just one more time
Ooh I see you, see you, see you every time
And oh my I, I like your style
You, you make me, make me, make me wanna cry
And now I beg to see you dance just one more time
So they say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh
I've never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you're done I'll make you do it all again
They say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
I've never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you're done I'll make you do it all again
Ooh
Woah-oh, woah-oh, oh
Ooh
Ah ah, ah
They say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh
I've never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you're done I'll make you do it all again
They say
Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
I've never seen anybody do the things you do before
They say move for me, move for me, move for me, ay, ay, ay
And when you're done I'll make you do it all again
All again











Sunday 7 November 2021

The Star Of The County Down

 "Star of the County Down" is an Irish ballad set near Banbridge in County Down, in Northern Ireland. The words are by Cathal MacGarvey (1866–1927) from Ramelton, County Donegal. The tune is traditional, and may be known as "Dives and Lazarus" or (as a hymn tune) "Kingsfold".

The melody was also used in an Irish folk song called "My Love Nell". The lyrics of "My Love Nell" tell the story of a young man who courts a girl but loses her when she emigrates to America. The only real similarity with "Star of the County Down" is that Nell too comes from County Down. This may have inspired MacGarvey to place the heroine of his new song in Down as well. MacGarvey was from Donegal.

"The Star of the County Down" uses a tight rhyme scheme. Each stanza is a double quatrain, and the first and third lines of each quatrain have an internal rhyme on the second and fourth feet: [aa]b[cc]b. The refrain is a single quatrain with the same rhyming pattern.

The song is sung from the point of view of a young man who chances to meet a charming lady by the name of Rose (or Rosie) McCann, referred to as the "star of the County Down". From a brief encounter the writer's infatuation grows until, by the end of the ballad, he imagines himself marrying the girl. 

To download the easy alphanotes and chords sheet music, look here. Enjoy!

Lyrics: 
Near Banbridge town, in the County Down
One morning last July
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she smiled as she passed me by
She looked so sweet from her two bare feet
To the sheen of her nut brown hair
Such a winsome elf, I'm ashamed of myself
For the see of her standing there
From Bantry Bay of the Derry's Quay
From Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the fair colleen
That I met in the County Down
As she onward sped, sure I scratched my head
And I looked with a feelin' rare
And I says, says I, to a passer-by
"Who's the maid with the nut brown hair?"
Well he looked at me and he said to me
"That's the gem of Ireland's crown
Young Rosie McCann from the banks of the Bann
She's the star of the County Down"
From Bantry Bay of the Derry's Quay
From Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the fair colleen
That I met in the County Down
She had soft brown eyes with a look so shy
And a smile like the rose in June
And she sang so sweet, what a lovely treat
As she lilted an Irish tune
At the Lammas dance, I was in a trance
As she whirled with the lads of the town
And my heart did race just to see the face
Of the star of the County Down
From Bantry Bay of the Derry's Quay
From Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the fair colleen
That I met in the County Down
At the Harvest Fair she'll be surely there
So I'll dress in my Sunday clothes
With my shoes shone bright and my hat cocked right
For a smile from my nut brown rose
No pipe I'll smoke, no horse I'll yoke
'Til my plough was a rust colour brown
And a smiling bride by my own fireside
Sits the star of the County Down
From Bantry Bay of the Derry's Quay
From Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the fair colleen
That I met in the County Down
From Bantry Bay of the Derry's Quay
From Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the fair colleen
That I met in the County Down






















Friday 29 October 2021

Oft In The Stilly Night

 Oft In The Stilly Night is actually a poem written by Thomas Moore. 

Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852) was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. Their setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot. Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation Moore was seen to defend the tradition of the Church in Ireland against both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies. The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald depicts the United Irish leader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform. Complementing Maria Edgeworth's Castle RackrentMemoirs of Captain Rock is a saga, not of Anglo-Irish landowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to the semi-insurrection of "Whiteboyism". Today, however, Moore is remembered almost alone either for his Irish Melodies (typically "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Last Rose of Summer") or, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron.

Thomas Moore was born to Anastasia Codd from Wexford and John Moore from Kerry over his parents' grocery shop in Aungier Street, Dublin, He had two younger sisters, Kate and Ellen. Moore showed an early interest in music and performance, staging musical plays with his friends and entertaining hope of being an actor. In Dublin he attended Samuel Whyte's English grammar school where he was schooled in Latin and Greek and became fluent in French and Italian. By age fourteen he had had one of his poems published in a new literary magazine called the Anthologia Hibernica (“Irish Anthology”).

Samuel Whyte had taught Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish playwright and English Whig politician, of whom Moore later was to write a biography. 

In 1795, Moore was among the first Catholics admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, preparing, as his mother had hoped, for a career in law. Through his friends at Trinity, Robert Emmett and Edward Hudson, Moore was connected to the popular politics of the capital agitated by the French Revolution and by the prospect of a French invasion. With their encouragement, in 1797, Moore wrote an appeal to his fellow students to resist the proposal, then being canvassed by the English-appointed Dublin Castle administration, to secure Ireland by incorporating the kingdom in a union with Great Britain. In April 1798, Moore was acquitted at Trinity on the charge of being a party, through the Society of United Irishmen, to sedition.

Moore had not taken the United Irish oath with Emmett and Hudson, and he played no part in the republican rebellion of 1798, or in the conspiracy for which Emmett was executed in 1803. Later, in a biography of the United Irish leader Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1831), he made clear his sympathies, not hiding his regret that the French expedition under General Hoche failed in December 1796 to effect a landing. To Emmett's sacrifice on the gallows Moore pays homage in the song "O, Breathe Not His Name". 

In 1799, Moore continued his law studies at Middle Temple in London. The impecunious student was assisted by friends in the expatriate Irish community in London, including Barbara, widow of Arthur Chichester, 1st Marquess of Donegall, the landlord and borough-owner of Belfast.

Moore's translations of Anacreon, celebrating wine, women and song, were published in 1800 with a dedication to the Prince of Wales. His introduction to the future Prince Regent and King, George IV was a high point in Moore's ingratiation with aristocratic and literary circles in London, a success due in great degree to his talents as a singer and songwriter. In the same year he collaborated briefly as a librettist with Michael Kelly in the comic opera, The Gypsy Prince, staged at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket,

In 1801, Moore hazarded a collection of his own verse: Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little Esq.. The pseudonym may have been advised by their juvenile eroticism. Moore's celebration of kisses and embraces skirted contemporary standards of propriety. When these tightened in the Victorian era, they were to put an end to what was a relative publishing success. 

In the hope of future advancement, Moore reluctantly sailed from London in 1803 to take up a government post secured through the favours of Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira (a man distinct in his class for having, on the eve of the rebellion in Ireland, continued to protest government and loyalist outrages). Moore was to be the registrar of the Admiralty Prize Court in Bermuda. Although as late as 1925 still recalled as "the poet laureate" of the island, Moore found life on Bermuda sufficiently dull that after six months he appointed a deputy and left for an extended tour of North America. As in London, Moore secured high-society introductions in the United States including to the President, Thomas Jefferson. Repelled by the provincialism of the average American, Moore consorted with exiled European aristocrats, come to recover their fortunes, and with oligarchic Federalists from whom he received what he later conceded was a "twisted and tainted" view of the new republic.

Following his return to England in 1804, Moore published Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806). In addition to complaints about America and Americans (including their defence of slavery), this catalogued Moore's real and imagined escapades with American women. Francis Jeffrey denounced the volume in the Edinburgh Review (July 1806), calling Moore "the most licentious of modern versifiers", a poet whose aim is "to impose corruption upon his readers, by concealing it under the mask of refinement." Moore challenged Jeffrey to a duel but their confrontation was interrupted by the police. In what seemed to be a "pattern" in Moore's life ("it was possible to condemn [Moore] only if you did not know him"), the two then became fast friends.

Moore, nonetheless, was dogged by the report that the police had found that the pistol given to Jeffreys was unloaded. In his satirical English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Byron, who had himself been stung by one of Jeffrey's review, suggested Moore's weapon was also "leadless": "on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evaporated". To Moore this was scarcely more satisfactory, and he wrote to Byron implying that unless the remarks were clarified, Byron, too, would be challenged. In the event, when Byron, who had been abroad, returned there was again reconciliation and a lasting friendship.

In 1809, Moore was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

To download the easy alphanotes and chords sheet music, look here. Enjoy!


Lyrics: 

Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm’d and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain hath bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

When I remember all
The friends, so link’d together,
I’ve seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me. 
































Tuesday 26 October 2021

The Snowy-Breasted Pearl

The Snowy-Breasted Pearl, these words are translated from the Irish by George Petrie (who wrote Ancient Music of Ireland (1855). The tune appears in A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music by Edward Bunting (1796). It is there credited to Turlough O’Carolan.
Some would say that the person writing/thinking/singing these words, in today’s world, would be very unusual, but when you think of them in the context of the time, they are beautiful. 
To download the easy alphanotes and chords sheet music, look here. Enjoy!
Lyrics:
There's a colleen fair as May
For a year and for a day
I have sought by every way
Her heart to gain
There's no art of tongue or eye
Fond youths with maidens try
But I've tried with ceaseless sigh
Yet tried in vain

If to France or far off Spain
She crossed the wat'ry main
To see her face again the seas I'd brave
And if it's heaven's decree
That mine she'll never be
May the Son of Mary me in mercy save
But a kiss with welcome bland
And the touch of thy fair hand
Are all that I demand
Would'st thou not spurn
For if not mine, dear girl
My snowy breasted pearl
May I never from the fair
With life return


















Monday 25 October 2021

Down By The Salley Gardens

 "Down by the Salley Gardens" (Irish: Gort na Saileán) is a poem by William Butler Yeats published in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889.

Yeats indicated in a note that it was "an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of BallisodareSligo, who often sings them to herself." The "old song" may have been the ballad The Rambling Boys of Pleasure which contains the following verse:

"Down by yon flowery garden my love and I we first did meet.
I took her in my arms and to her I gave kisses sweet
She bade me take life easy just as the leaves fall from the tree.
But I being young and foolish, with my darling did not agree."

The similarity to the first verse of the Yeats version is unmistakable and would suggest that this was indeed the song Yeats remembered the old woman singing. The rest of the song, however, is quite different.

Yeats's original title, "An Old Song Re-Sung", reflected his debt to The Rambling Boys of Pleasure. It first appeared under its present title when it was reprinted in Poems in 1895.

It has been suggested that the location of the "Salley Gardens" was on the banks of the river at Ballysadare near Sligo where the residents cultivated trees to provide roof thatching materials. "Salley" or "sally" is a form of the Standard English word "sallow", i.e., a tree of the genus Salix. It is close in sound to the Irish word saileach, meaning willow.

The verse was subsequently set to music by Herbert Hughes to the traditional air The Moorlough Shore (also known as "The Maids of Mourne Shore") in 1909. In the 1920s composer Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) set the text to her own music. The composer John Ireland (1879–1962) set the words to an original melody in his song cycle Songs Sacred and Profane, written in 1929–31. There is also a vocal setting by the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, which was published in 1938. Benjamin Britten published a setting of the poem in 1943, using the tune Hughes collected. In 1988, the American composer John Corigliano wrote and published his setting with the G. Schirmer Inc. publishing company.

To download the easy alphanotes and chords sheet music, look here. Enjoy!


Lyrics: 

Down by the Salley gardens, my love and I did meet
She passed the Salley gardens with little snow-white feet
She bid me take life easy, as the leaves grow on the trees
But I, being young and foolish, with her I did not agree
In a field by the river, my love and I did stand
And on my leaning shoulder she placed her snow-white hand
She bid me take love easy, as the grass grows on the weirs
But I was young and foolish and now I am full of tears
Down by the Salley gardens, my love and I did meet
And she passed the Salley gardens with little snow-white feet
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs
But I was young and foolish and now I am full of tears



















Sunday 24 October 2021

Cockles and Mussels / Molly Malone

"Molly Malone" (also known as "Cockles and Mussels" or "In Dublin's Fair City") is a popular song set in Dublin, Ireland, which has become its unofficial anthem.

A statue representing Molly Malone was unveiled on Grafton Street by then Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ben Briscoe, during the 1988 Dublin Millennium celebrations, when 13 June was declared to be Molly Malone Day. In July 2014, the statue was relocated to Suffolk Street, in front of the Tourist Information Office, to make way for Luas track-laying work at the old location.

The song tells the fictional tale of a fishwife who plied her trade on the streets of Dublin and died young, of a fever. In the late 20th century, a legend grew up that there was a historical Molly, who lived in the 17th century. She is typically represented as a hawker by day and part-time prostitute by night. In contrast, she has also been portrayed as one of the few chaste female street hawkers of her day.

There is no evidence that the song is based on a real woman in the 17th century or any other time. The name "Molly" originated as a familiar version of the names Mary and Margaret. Many such "Molly" Malones were born in Dublin over the centuries, but no evidence connects any of them to the events in the song. Nevertheless, the Dublin Millennium Commission in 1988 endorsed claims made for a Mary Malone who died on 13 June 1699, and proclaimed 13 June to be "Molly Malone Day".

The song is not recorded earlier than 1876, when it was published in BostonMassachusetts. Its placement in the section of the book titled "Songs from English and German Universities" suggests an Irish origin. It was also published by Francis Brothers and Day in London in 1884 as a work written and composed by James Yorkston, of Edinburgh, with music arranged by Edmund Forman. The London edition states that it was reprinted by permission of Kohler and Son of Edinburgh, implying that the first edition was in Scotland, but no copies of it have been found. According to Siobhán Marie Kilfeather, the song is from the music hall style of the period, and one cannot wholly dismiss the possibility that it is "based on an older folk song", but "neither melody nor words bear any relationship to the Irish tradition of street ballads". She calls the story of the historical Molly "nonsense". The song is in a familiar tragicomic mode that was then popular and was probably influenced by earlier songs with a similar theme, such as Percy Montrose's "Oh My Darling, Clementine", which was written in about 1880.

A variant, "Cockles and Mussels", with some different lyrics, appeared in Students' Songs: Comprising the Newest and Most Popular College Songs As Now Sung at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, ... Union, Etc in 1884.

A copy of Apollo's Medley, dating from around 1790, published in Doncaster and rediscovered in 2010, contains a song referring to "Sweet Molly Malone" on page 78 that ends with the line "Och! I'll roar and I'll groan, My sweet Molly Malone, Till I'm bone of your bone, And asleep in your bed." Other than this name and the fact that she lives in Howth, near Dublin, this song bears no resemblance to Molly Malone. The song was later reprinted in the collection The Shamrock: A Collection of Irish Songs (1831) and was published in The Edinburgh Literary Journal that year with the title "Molly Malone".

Some elements of the song appear in several earlier songs. A character named Molly Malone appears in at least two other songs. The song "Widow Malone," published as early as 1809, refers to the title character alternately as "Molly Malone," "Mary Malone" and "sweet mistress Malone". An American song, "Meet Me Miss Molly Malone", was published as early as 1840. The song "Pat Corney's Account of Himself", published as early as 1826, begins, "Now it's show me that city where the girls are so pretty" and ends, "Crying oysters, and cockles, and Mussels for sale." During the 19th century, the expression "Dublin's fair city" was used regularly in reference to Dublin, and the phrase "alive, alive O" is known to have been shouted by street vendors selling oysters, mussels, fish and eels.  

Molly is commemorated in a statue commissioned by Jurys Hotel Group and designed by Jeanne Rynhart, erected to celebrate the city's first millennium in 1988. Originally placed at the bottom of Grafton Street in Dublin, this statue is known colloquially as "The Tart with the Cart" or "The Trollop With The Scallop(s)". The statue portrays Molly as a busty young woman in 17th-century dress. Her low-cut dress and large breasts were justified on the grounds that as "women breastfed publicly in Molly's time, breasts were popped out all over the place."

The statue was later removed and kept in storage to make way for the new Luas tracks. In July 2014, it was placed outside the Dublin Tourist Office on Suffolk Street. 

To download the easy alphanotes and chords sheet music, look here. Enjoy!


Lyrics:


In Dublin's fair city,
Where the girls are so pretty,
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheel-barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"
"Alive, alive, oh,
Alive, alive, oh,"
Crying "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh".
She was a fishmonger
But sure 'twas no wonder
For so were her father and mother before
And they each wheel'd their barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying "Cockles and mussels alive, alive oh!"
(chorus)
She died of a fever,
And no one could save her,
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.
But her ghost wheels her barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"
(chorus) ×2