Finding the meaning of the classic New Year song "Those Old Days"

It is said that when Auld Lang Syne is played or sung, the listeners are usually too drunk to care about its meaning. Because, people often sing or listen to Auld Lang Syne when the New Year comes, when attending a graduation ceremony, when celebrating an event in life, or even at the funeral of a loved one...

In short, those were special times when everyone was more interested in the event they were attending than in the song that was being played, the melody of which was already so familiar, like Auld Lang Syne. Indeed, Auld Lang Syne appeared everywhere, even in pre-recorded pieces of music of not very high artistic quality used for… toys or organs for beginners.

"Those Old Days" is second only to "Happy Birthday"

Type the song’s name into YouTube and 32,000 versions come up. And that’s not the whole story. Hundreds of the world’s greatest singers, from Elvis Presley, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin, Boney M, The Beach Boys, Susan Boyle, Lea Michele, to the Chipmunks and young and old alike… generations have sung Auld Lang Syne. Jimi Hendrix and Kenny G even turned the song into music.

The song has been translated into 40 languages ​​around the world. Many voices, many styles, but the sadness remains the same. There are also versions that are lively, fast and cheerful, but the rolling notes of Auld Lang Syne over and over again really fit the meaning of “the old days”.

According to the Washington Post, Auld Lang Syne is the most played song in the world, second only to Happy Birthday. If Robert Burns were alive, the royalties from the song would have made him a billionaire.

According to the Washington Post, if he were alive, Robert Burns would be a billionaire thanks to this song.

The song Auld Lang Syne or Old Long Since, despite its close association with New Year's Eve, was not created with the intention of welcoming New Year's Eve or New Year's Eve. Nor does it have anything to do with the holidays. Auld Lang Syne is about remembering old friends and not letting them be forgotten.

The song’s chorus, “For Auld Lang Syne,” is particularly fitting to sing while raising a glass with friends, to the passing of the old year and the coming of the new. But why is the melody so sad?

Famous Songs That No One Knows

According to the Telegraph, this is not an original work. In 1788, Robert Burns, the poet known as the Shakespeare of Scotland, rewrote the poem Auld Lang Syne, based on a famous folk song of this country. Because it is a folk song, the original author of Auld Lang Syne will always be a mystery.

“This is an old song, of an old time, but never printed, nor written, until I copied it from an old man,” Burns wrote when he sent the work to be published. But historians have investigated and discovered that there was no old man. Burns himself wrote the lyrics.

Rewriting Auld Lang Syne was no easy task. In the Scotland of Burns’s time, it was a folk song that everyone had heard, but whose words were not well known. It was inevitable that there would be many variations. Even the version that is now sung is not the one Burns wrote at the time, in the old Scots language.

A lyric from Auld Lang Syne

After copying the poem, Burns sent it to his friend Agnes Dunlop. In a letter accompanying it, he exclaimed: “This work has a fire of natural genius, greater than a dozen drunken Englishmen out there.”

Five years later, he sent the poem to James Johnson, a musician who was working on a book of Scottish folk songs. Burns had been dead for several months when Johnson included the song in the book that would later make Auld Lang Syne world famous.

It didn't take long for the song to become a traditional New Year's tune in Scotland and England. Later, when people from the UK emigrated to America, they brought Auld Lang Syne with them. The song became part of the young American culture.

But it was in the 20th century that Canadian-American conductor and musician Guy Lombardo really made the song famous, when he had his band play “Auld Lang Syne” as a bridge between two radio broadcasts during a live performance at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York in 1929.

Coincidentally, they played Auld Lang Syne just after midnight, the moment of transition between the old year and the new year. This spawned a tradition of playing New Year’s Eve music that lasted, though not without interruption, for nearly a hundred years. The popularity of the performance, which lasted from 1929 to 1977, earned Lombardo the nickname “Mr. New Year’s Eve.”

A work of art created by many people

“It is an easily adaptable song, it does not particularly emphasize the original meaning of friendship, so it can be borrowed and sung on different occasions,” commented Robert Crawford, biographer of poet Robert Burns.

Even Burns’s version, which is considered archaic, is a mishmash of sources, drawing on 16th-century poems by Allan Ramsay, Robert Ayton, and James Watson. According to Murray Pittock, a literary historian, the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne are made up of “uncountable notes and melodies,” and Burns is credited as co-author, not author.

“Burns’ genius was to recognise the power of this old song and give it new life, expressing an international spirit while still retaining its Scottish identity,” said curator Christine Nelson.

But beyond the lyrics, the tune to Auld Lang Syne has an interesting history. The tune Burns wrote for the song in 1788 is not the one we sing today. It was the idea of ​​George Thomson, a publishing executive.

According to TT&VH