Posted on 04/26/2021 9:13:54 PM PDT by FLNittany
IMO - One of the most beautiful songs ever written and performed.
Annie's Answer--The El Dorados
John Denver was a pompous a$$,
Given your taste in music, you’ll probably like this too.
It’s arguably the single most besutiful recorded version of “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life”, itself a very strong contender for “Most Beautiful American Popular Song Ever.”
Dusty Springfield recorded it circa 1970, but her recorded version was not released until circa 1994. It looks as if it was initially shelved for reasonably important legal/business reasons. Soon after its release, though, it was prominently featured in a jewelry commercial on television that caused many, many people, upon hearing it for the first time, to say, whoa—so beautiful—who is that singer?
She really is magnificent on this track. The comments to the YouTube video are worth reading too.
So many others, in fact, most of the best in the industry actually, recorded this very song before and since, but Dusty...well, nothing personal, but it really seems as if she nailed it. Drop the mic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyJRsp5t9mA
What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?
Dusty Springfield
LYRICS
What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and south and east and west of your life
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me
All the seasons and the times of your days
All the nickels and the dimes of your days
Let the reasons and the rhymes of your days
All begin and end with me
I want to see your face
In every kind of light
In fields of dawn
And forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on the cake
Oh, let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make
Those tomorrow’s waiting deep in your eyes
And the world of love you keep in your eyes
I’ll awaken what’s asleep in your eyes
It may take a kiss or two
Through all of my life
Summer, winter, spring and fall of my life
All I ever will recall of my life
Is all of my life with you, ooh, ooh
He's the guy who would show up on dirt roads in a limo as mentioned in another post, sing about the environment while having huge gas tanks installed on his property during the gas shortage (it was for the benefit of his employees, not himself. He was too pure for that) and was a serial drunk driver and who didn't have a valid flying license at the time he died because it was suspended due to his impaired driving convictions. The perfect neighbor. But he could sing.
Thank you. :)
Music by Michel Legrand, lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman, a musical combination which created some other very beautiful works, “The Windmills of Your Mind”, “The Moon and I”, “How do you keep the music playing:, and a host of others.
bookmark
Next time I work with Annie will be in '73.
Then she'll be too old to make a fool of me.
Yup, and sang it in professional simplicity.
They dressed decently, didn’t have flashing lights, smoke machines and music that damaged your hearing.
I miss the way music used to be performed.
Was one of our wedding songs in 1978. Never one of my favorite artists, but meaningful song nonetheless. Still married, too, so there’s that.
OMG, good thing my spouse is not on FR. we were married in 1974!
Sometimers disesae
“That’s All” by Nat King Cole is another beauty. My husband would sing that to me while we were dating .
We saw Denver at the Hollywood Bowl a year or two before he was killed when his plane crashed into Monterey Bay. He gave an excellent concert. When he was killed, my husband said the plane he was flying should be banned. The second fuel tank changeover handle was back over the pilot’s shoulder. Difficult to reach. Denver was not the first to be killed in the Long EZ.
'Annie's Song': Remembering John Denver's Masterpiece
BY COURTNEY FOX
One of John Denver's most well-known songs (outside of the obvious ode to West Virginia, "Take Me Home, Country Roads,") is "Annie's Song." Nearly a decade after Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. joined the Mitchell Trio as "John Denver," he wrote a love song for the ages.
Denver wrote this for his wife at the time, Annie Martell, i.e. Annie Denver, after they had a major fight and brief separation. Apparently, Denver wrote the song in 10 minutes while he was riding a ski lift up an Aspen mountain in Colorado, reflecting on how thankful he was they didn't break up. Talk about the ultimate way to say, "I'm sorry." It takes me 10 minutes just to find a spot in the Target parking lot so it's incredibly impressive (and a little annoying) that that's all the time it took Denver to write this iconic country love song. No wonder the "Sunshine on my Shoulders" singer-songwriter is an American music legend and Colorado Music Hall of Fame inductee.
The Denver family lived in Minnesota together but after "Rocky Mountain High," relocated to Aspen. They even adopted two children, son Zachary and daughter, Anna Kate. Unfortunately, John Denver and his wife Anne would go on to have a messy divorce in 1982, but thankfully we have this beautiful song to remember the love the iconic songwriter and his wife once had. And yeah, the entertainer may have used a chainsaw to tear their bed in half because he was so angry during the divorce process (it was a pretty intense time) but don't let that ruin this love-soaked hit single's well-earned legacy. Anne Denver's song stands the test of time alongside other Denver hits including "Leaving On A Jet Plane" and "Windsong", years after his tragic death in Monterey Bay.
Read the lyrics to this classic song below, listen to Denver's sweet voice, and try not to cry thinking about your loved ones as this folk-rock classic plays in the background. (Yes, I always tear up too. It reminds me of being back home again for Christmas.) It's the true epitome of how beautiful love can be, and it'll have you saying "I love you" to any and everyone you care about. (Beware of cover versions, they're not as good. You need the original. It's country music at its greatest.)
'Annie's Song' Lyrics:
You fill up my senses
Like a night in a forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses
Come fill me again
Come let me love you
Let me give my life to you
Let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you
Let me always be with you
Come let me love you
Come love me again
You fill up my senses
Like a night in a forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses
Come fill me again
Totally agree. Denver is one of my fav musicians, guitarists, and his works are incredible. So many of his songs are classics, and this is one of his best. He is way too underappreciated in my view.
His guitar piece Season Suite - Late Winter, Early Spring is one of the most mellow, sweet guitar pieces ever. I could listen to it a hundred times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTNaO0xSYsI
I am a guitarist, and would love to be able to play this, but it is dubbed with Denver playing two different lines then melding them together - so one guitarist cannot play it alone.
Season Suite is one of my favorites.
He DID NOT commit suicide according to his brother. DUI, messy divorce. Love songs that may not have been true. Dudley Moore ‘loved’ women and the cops had to show up at his house in a domestic dispute. Then the hypocritical leftism(virtue signaling) is enough to make one wonder about those types. I only wish i could have seen him perform.
Tip:
Never fly a “put it together yourself” airplane.
IF you do, put gas in it first.
"Annie's Song" will always remind me of Richard Nixon. That because it was the song that was playing on the radio just before the DJ broke in to announce that Nixon had decided to resign the presidency over Watergate.
Doesn't even seem that long ago. Fifty years can sure fly by.
I love singing John Denver songs. When I was younger, I could sound just like. But I can’t sing this song without thinking of what he did to her.
Denver admitted to “several incidents of infidelity.”
Took a chain saw and cut their bed in half. From his autobiography, “Take Me Home” he said “Before I knew it I had her on the kitchen counter and my hands were around her throat. And I stopped. I had almost lost control but didn’t.”
He wrote the song in ten minutes on a ski lift to apologize to Annie and to be thankful they were getting back together. But he had been continually cheating on Annie from the first weeks of their marriage, because he was “lonely on the road.”
He obviously did not “die in her arms” because he did not deal with his real issues. “Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain...” Beautiful word pictures, just the kind of thing the chicks go for, but these words betray his self-absorbed immature thinking about his wife and marriage in general. My wife is not “like the mountains in springtime,” she is a PERSON with frustrations and fears made worse by my foolishness and selfishness.
Cassy Delaney, 2nd wife, told what he was really like. “John Denver tried to destroy us!” she said. The music and the image that is “John Denver” is a nice female fantasy. The actual guy, John Henry Deutschendorf, not nice at all.
The Orlando Sentinel in November 1994 commenting on Denver’s book said it best, “He sees no contradiction that he wrote “Rocky Mountain High” (”They try to tear the mountain down to bring in a couple more, more people, more scars upon the land”) as he was in the process of moving to Colorado and building a home on a previously undeveloped mountainside.” (snip) “(H)e barged into their house one morning, threw her onto a kitchen table and choked her for cutting down some scrub oaks in their back yard. Then he cut up the house with a chain saw.”
“I had almost lost control, but I didn’t.” he says.
What!?
He was that close to killing her!?
Just another OJ Simpson IMHO.
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