Seasons in the Sun

Seasons in the Sun is a song by Terry Jacks in 1974. It is based on the chanson Le Mori Bond ( " The Dying " ) of the Belgian Jacques Brel 's 1961 and reached into Jack's version in many countries number one on the charts. The play is about a dying man who sends last Greetings to the people who have accompanied him on his journey through life.

Formation

Lyricist Rod McKuen translated the play into English in 1963, and initially took the Kingston Trio on the title. The piece sold not very good and did not manage the jump in the U.S. charts, but the Canadian singer Terry Jacks remained in my memory. He changed some elements of the last verse and adapted the music of the 1970s. Starting from Canada was the title in Jack's version became a hit, reaching # 1 on the charts in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the USA, Great Britain, Norway and Belgium.

Text

Jack made ​​the original song of Brel both in text and in interpretation significantly softer and partly sentimental. So goodbye to the original, the protagonist of his best friend Émile, the local pastor, his wife's lover, and finally by his unfaithful wife. The allusions to the infidelity of the woman stroked Jack when he rewrote the text. The third verse is now targeted at a "Michelle" - apparently the girlfriend or wife of the speaker, which is attributed in his life, a positive influence. At the same time in the English version in the second stanza, in which - unlike in the original - the protagonist says to his father, built allusions to a possible " botched life." This gives the song a moralizing tone. Significant differences exist also in the chorus: While in Brel jagged sung original solicits the speaker that everyone is looking forward to celebrate and when he " in the pit " comes, the sound of Jack's ' chorus is rather nostalgic and melancholic.

Cover versions

Seasons in the Sun was repeatedly gecovert, among other things, of the Mamas and Papas and Cat Stevens. Newer versions come from Nirvana and Blink 182, Black Box Recorder, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and Sum 41, who made ​​the play a danceable ska song and Westlife, which in 1999 together with a version of I Have a Dream accounted for the second time for number one and to a Christmas hit. A German adaptation of the original by Jacques Brel is the song Adieu Emile by Klaus Hoffmann.