Cheap Music
Dec. 5th, 2025 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo "What's this?" asks Ailz- and half-sings a lyric that goes. "Honeymoon, honeymoon....' She's got it going through her head and she doesn't know what it is.
"No idea," I say. "Never heard it before."
Only I have. We look it up and it turns out to me a misreembered line from "By the Light of the Silvery Moon"- a song published in 1909 but fixed in the collective memory by a version sung by Doris Day nearly 50 years later. It's the epitome of the June, moon, spoon" school of song-writing- twee and sugary- but what a pretty tune!
Half a century goes by, two world wars- and all sorts of other awfulness- and it was still cutting the mustard. "How odd", I think.
But then again no odder than people still finding the Beatles cool- indeed obsessing about them- in 2025.
Last word to Noel Coward- himself no mean purveyor of charming little ditties- "Strange how potent cheap music is...."
"No idea," I say. "Never heard it before."
Only I have. We look it up and it turns out to me a misreembered line from "By the Light of the Silvery Moon"- a song published in 1909 but fixed in the collective memory by a version sung by Doris Day nearly 50 years later. It's the epitome of the June, moon, spoon" school of song-writing- twee and sugary- but what a pretty tune!
Half a century goes by, two world wars- and all sorts of other awfulness- and it was still cutting the mustard. "How odd", I think.
But then again no odder than people still finding the Beatles cool- indeed obsessing about them- in 2025.
Last word to Noel Coward- himself no mean purveyor of charming little ditties- "Strange how potent cheap music is...."
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Date: 2025-12-06 02:39 am (UTC)