Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Depressing Lyrics: "Another Autumn"

Still another great depressing lyric, this one from Paint Your Wagon by Lerner and Loewe: "Another Autumn," sung by Tony Bavaar and set to one of those Fritz Loewe tunes that's half pastiche and half Viennese operetta: it sounds vaguely Western, in keeping with the setting, until you listen closer and realize that it's really more of an operetta ballad with a Johann Strauss-ish feel to it -- arranged differently, it could be a waltz.


Verse

Winter's coming on, I feel it all around,
The leaves are moving faster along the ground.
Why have all the dreams been broken wide apart,
And where is all the hope that was in my heart?

Refrain

Another autumn,
I've known the chill before,
But every autumn
I feel it more and more.
For you can dream in spring
When every hope is high,
But when the fall comes in
They all begin
To fade and die.
Another autumn,
So sweet when all is well,
But how it haunts you
When all is wrong.
For one thing time has shown,
If you're alone
When autumn comes,
You'll be alone all winter long.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I stumbled across this while doing some reading about autumn (the season), which put me in mind of this song.

I always think that the song deserves to be better known than it is: the words are very evocative and the melody is lovely — as you say, it has a Vienna-ish feel to it, as does quite a lot of Frederick Loewe's music, but it's none the worse for that. Now I need to see if I can find it to listen to it again...