Tuesday, December 28, 2010

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Given the countless songs inspired by Christmas events both secular and religious, you'd think New Year's Eve would have its share. Let's see: there's Frank Loesser's romantic classic, "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" (covered admirably by Rufus Wainwright, BTW), Robert Burn's traditional Scottish poem set to a folk song over 200 years ago, "Auld Lang Syne" and...what else? Even the Dan Fogelberg song people tend to associate with New Year's Eve, "Same Old Lang Syne," is about a real-life encounter Fogelberg had with an old high school girlfriend - on Christmas Eve. One of my favorite bands, U2, has a song for January 1, "New Year's Day."

I imagine there have been novelty songs about NYE that have quickly slipped from fashion, but I'll be darned if I can name them for you. New Year's Eve is often a time to go out partying and dancing, so that is perhaps the kind of music we associate most with this holiday, whether our tastes run to Cee-Lo or AC/DC or Vampire Weekend. (Or Guy Lombardo.) Do you have any favorites that help you ring out the old, ring in the new? Will you be going out this NYE or laying low? (Perhaps conserving your energy for da Bears/Packers game on Sunday?) Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve and a prosperous, healthy 2011. Oh and P.S. since our funding came in late 2010, you can expect lots of new music on our shelves in the next few weeks - awesome!

1 comment:

Linda K. said...

We always "lay low" on NYE. My idea of a fun NYE is to watch old movies on DVD, inside where it's warm and safe. We recently bought a set of the old Ellery Queen TV series featuring Jim Hutton as Ellery and David Wayne as Inspector Richard Queen. The episodes are loaded with great actors and are lots of fun. There's a New Year's Eve episode featuring Guy Lombardo and his band with many of the old songs and a countdown to the New Year (1947.) Hopefully the library will add this DVD set to it's collection once funding is available again.

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