I think it's pretty obvious why we're posting this song this month. It's one of the happiest songs ever written. A moderate hit in the late 1970's, it's fondly remembered as a classic today.
It's also got a single note that Withers sustains for eighteen seconds. This is one of the longest ever sustained in a pop song.
The song has experienced something of a resurgence in 2020, largely due to its placement in this Allstate commercial. Admit it, you're smiling now, aren't you?
Country Music Hall of Fame member Charlie Pride, the first black country superstar and a favorite of my mother, has passed away at age 86 of complications from COVID-19.
It's real, people.
Anyway, here he is performing one of his sweetest songs on Marty Stuart's show.
This song, released in 1971, was Pride's only Top 40 pop hit, but his 8th country #1, and endured as one of his signature songs.
I grew up listening to Charlie Pride because my mother and father were fans of his. He will be missed.
OK, folks! It's time for a history lesson. Today, we're going to learn about Queen Boudica.
In short words, Boudica was a Celtic tribal queen in what is now eastern England in the early A.D. times. Around 60 A.D., she led an uprising against the invading Roman Empire (who had killed her husband and raped her daughters), by uniting the warring Celtic tribes for the first time in history. That's right. A woman led that uprising. It was an uprising that they eventually lost and ended in her death, but it was 1) enough to make the Romans consider withdrawing and 2) enough to make her a folk hero to this day.
In the words of Dr. Stephen Strange, in the Marvel movie Dr. Strange, Chuck Mangione "charted a top 10 hit with a flugelhorn."
This is an undeniably uplifting instrumental by a Rochester, NY native - the same place where I am writing this blog right now. As I write this, it is cold and there is snow on the ground - but the most famous song for flugelhorn ever written is warming it up in here today.
Mangione rerecorded the song (albeit more guitar-heavy) in 1982, with a vocal by his longtime guitarist, Don Potter. The song takes on a different meaning, but it's still a sweet song.
The weird part about that? The song is from 2016. It took three years and a performance at the MTV Video Music Award to make it a big hit.
That unexpected 2nd life for this great song meant that a new video was in order..... given that the first one was a movie tie-in for a movie that didn't enjoy the same resurgence.
The YouTube comments on this song say everything you need to know:
"Top 10 Crossovers Nobody Expected: Canadian folk music and the Wiggles."
Yes. That's Emma from The Wiggles. And she visualizes a song about recognizing the light in someone else that they might not see in themselves well. Not that the lyrics needed the help.
If you aren't Canadian, chances are you haven't heard of The East Pointers, a delightful folk group from Prince Edward Island. Juno Award winners in 2017, if you know anything about Canadian geography, you'll understand their name. Even if you aren't, you can't help but smile when you hear this song.... can you?
(Update: 26 January 2021): I don't often update posts this quickly, but 1) this song is so amazing I wanted to post a 2nd version of it and 2) I wanted to answer one question I've gotten more than once from our mostly American audience. Emma is using AUSLAN, which is Australian sign language, and not ASL, or American sign. That's why you don't recognize all the signs.
