Dan Fogelberg - "Same Old Lang Syne"
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Topic: Dan Fogelberg - "Same Old Lang Syne"
Posted By: Scanner
Subject: Dan Fogelberg - "Same Old Lang Syne"
Date Posted: 21 November 2022 at 11:35am
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With holiday music already charting and airing on the radio,
I thought this would the time of the year to discuss whether Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" is a holiday song. This song first charted in 1980 during the seasonally appropriate month of December, but would peak two months later in February long after Christmas and New Year's. So, should this only be played this time of year or is it lyrically suitable to be listened to all year round? |
Replies:
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 21 November 2022 at 12:01pm
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I never thought of it as a holiday song. It's more a romantic song about lost love that just happens to be
set during the holidays. And based on a true story, BTW. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 21 November 2022 at 1:16pm
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I distinctly remember hearing the song on the radio with the “epilogue” removed-—it edited from the “another old lang syne”
lyric right into the sax solo at the end. Custom job, or was this on a promo? ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: NightAire
Date Posted: 21 November 2022 at 9:43pm
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I think of it as a holiday song, but it tests well enough to be played all year round on my 80s station. ------------- Gene Savage http://www.BlackLightRadio.com - http://www.BlackLightRadio.com http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage - http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage Tulsa, Oklahoma USA |
Posted By: VWestlife
Date Posted: 21 November 2022 at 10:58pm
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The Annie Lennox and Al Green version of "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" is also considered to be a Christmas song, because it was featured on the soundtrack of the Christmas movie "Scrooged", even though the lyrics of the song don't have anything to do with the holiday season, and radio stations play it all year round.
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Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 22 November 2022 at 6:25am
Just checked my promo, and it has the 5:18 version on both sides. I don't think I've ever heard an edit of this song, so it seems likely what you heard was a house edit. Personally, I'm so tired of this song if I never hear it again it would be OK. Not really a holiday song per se, but it's kind of become one over the years. Then again, "Frosty The Snowman" or "Sleigh Ride" aren't really either let alone "My Favorite Things", but most people consider them to be. |
sriv94 wrote:Posted By: JMD1961
Date Posted: 22 November 2022 at 9:27am
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Add "Winter Wonderland" to the list of Christmas songs
that never mentions the holiday. And for a chart hit that I've always questioned... New Kids on the Block's "This One's For The Children", considered a Christmas song strictly because it appears on their holiday collection. |
Posted By: Jody Thornton
Date Posted: 22 November 2022 at 11:18am
Wow! I could never hate this song, but again, I don't hear it all of the time either. In the last decade, every time I've heard it, I played it off an LP at home, or else it's a burned CD in the car. Never on the radio though. Mind you, I can relate to your sentiment with a lot of classic rock material. If I never heard the Eagles again, minus a couple of lesser hits, I'd be just fine. ------------- Cheers, Jody Thornton (Richmond Hill, Ontario) |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 3:37am
I agree with Paul's point of view. I'll also add that when it was a hit, I was in college, and in my college dorm, we just thought of it as a regular song (that mentioned 'old lang syne'). I don't think any of us thought we were listening to a Christmas song as it was climbing and falling down the chart. Because of the Dec 31st reference in the title, it started getting added to Christmas playlists and probably Christmas stations on Sirius XM. But I really don't think of it as a holiday song. Whereas "Winter Wonderland" is on so many Xmas albums, it is considered one, though the holiday isn't mentioned. If we gave it some thought, I'm sure we could come up with a long list of "Christmas" songs that never mention the word "Christmas" in them. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 3:42am
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Another odd example. Billy Joel refers to his song "She's Right on Time" as his
Christmas song. It has one line that mentions Christmas in it - but no other line in the song seems to be about Christmas at all. So IMHO, I don't really think of it as a Christmas song - just because it mentions the word once. Even the spirit of the song doesn't feel like a Christmas song. |
Posted By: davidlg1971
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 6:04pm
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I always thought of Same Old Lang Syne as a hybrid Christmas/New Year's song. Which makes sense - the first lyric is "Met my old lover in the grocery store, the snow was falling Christmas Eve..."
In the mid/late 1980s, my local top-40 northern California radio station played Same Old Lang Syne during the Christmas season, I think pretty regularly. Somewhere I probably still have a random 1987 radio segment I taped that included that song, along with a few others like Janet Jackson's Let's Wait Awhile. An interesting fact is that the story told in the lyrics is mostly true - except that the real ex-girlfriend's eyes were green, not blue. |
Posted By: Scanner
Date Posted: 23 November 2022 at 7:15pm
I don't recall hearing this version. However, I do recall one radio station fading out the song as soon as the "Auld Lang Syne" outro began. Once Fogelberg's hit streak began to cool, I only heard this song during the holiday season. (It's probably the only one of his hits that I hear at all anymore on the radio!) |