Winter has arrived. Rather rudely, I might add. Like a drunken dinner guest, it showed up late and knocked over the dessert cart. What can you do but hunker down, have a few drinks and crank up some tunes. Here are a few of my favorite songs about winter. There aren't many but these are pretty good.
CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Possibly the Mamas & Papas greatest tune. "I'd be safe and warm, if I was in L.A" sums up many people's thoughts on the subject. Warm? Yes. Safe? Maybe, not.
HAZY SHADE OF WINTER: One of Simon & Garfunkel's rockiest tunes. I always wonder who came up with the guitar lick? Paul Simon, maybe? Simon is actually a pretty good acoustic guitar player, so it could have been him. The Bangles had a hit cover version in the eighties. Susannah Hoffs has such a cool voice. Both bands do it better live, see YouTube for proof.
VALLEY WINTER SONG: Fountains Of Wayne was such an underrated band. Best known for their 2003 hit, Stacy's Mom, they released five albums of great guitar pop. Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger wrote jangly pop songs with Beatlesque harmonies and insightful understated lyrics. Think The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society. Valley Winter Song is no exception. Sadly, Adam Schlesinger died in 2020 at the age of 52 from Covid.
TEN DEGREES AND GETTING COLDER: A folkie Gordon Lightfoot song about a traveling musician freezing his butt off on the side of the highway, trying to catch a ride and pining for a woman. There are a couple of bluegrass cover versions of this song, one by J.D Crowe & The New South and the other by Tony Rice. Both are better than the original. Tony Rice released an album of Gordon Lightfoot covers that is worth checking out
IN THE BLEAK MID-WINTER. This is song is based on a poem that was written back in the 1800s. The poem was popular with soldiers during World War I. If you are a fan of the Netflix series Peaky Blinders, which takes place in the years following World War I, you may have noticed they utter the phrase, The bleak mid-winter, whenever somebody dies. There are many versions of this melancholy winter dirge. Two of my favorites are by James Taylor and Shawn Colvin.
BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE. For some reason this is now considered a Christmas song, although it never mentions the holiday. (Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow & Jingle Bells have suffered the same fate.) It has also become controversial in some circles, but we won't get into that. There are dozens of versions, but Dean Martin's is still the best. Both the original and the one he recorded with Martina McBride. (Of course, he was dead for the later recording, but we won't get into that one either.) I imagine this would be a very difficult duet to sing. Goes down even better with alcohol. But don't they all.
Casey Redmond
January 27, 2022
