This album really is from deep within me. It is a short collection of songs that
I have sung, played, arranged, produced and even composed. Some are dark and
evocative while others are uplifting and joyful. Love can bite us when we least
expect it but to tame our hearts is life’s greatest challenge.
I hope you enjoy the songs.
Fate and the inevitability of love so often drives us forward to something that is beyond our control and Eden Ahbez captures this beautifully in Nature Boy, the classic he wrote back in 1947. Ahbez was a genuinely bohemian character, living for a while with his family under the first ‘L’ of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles California. His big break-through was when Nat King Cole agreed to record his song, transforming it into a No 1 hit on the US Billboard Charts.
Cole’s version was the primary theme for the 1948 motion picture The Boy with Green Hair but the song was also prominently featured in Moulin Rouge, sung by David Bowie. There is a Nature Boy in all of us: strange, enchanted, wandering very far along life’s treacherous path.
I wrote this song about the break up of a very big relationship in my life. Upper Street was the name of the road in Isington, London where I lived for three years London in a very bohemian flat above the Almeida Theatre. (For bohemian read ‘run-down’.) Ending relationships is the hardest things to do, even when we know they are destructive and damaging. In all honesty, I am terrible at endings and the only way I could finally leave was to move back to Ireland. But the song is triumphant and upbeat and it is full of humour and a smattering of irony - the door slamming at the end speaks for itself.
3. She’s Out of My Life by Tom Bahler
Written by Tom Bahler after Karen Carpenter broke up with him (she found out he had fathered a child with another woman), this was the fourth single to be released by Michael Jackson from his successful Off the Wall album in 1980. A crucial moment in the song happened when Jackson, near the end, began to break down in the studio. He sang the word "life" with a breaking voice as he sobbed and moaned at the end. Some say it may have been a break up with his rumored girlfriend Tatum O'Neal but this moment in the song continued on Jackson's tours for the next fifteen years.
4. Serenade from Don Giovanni by Mozart
Don Giovanni is the ultimate womanizer and in this short aria he dresses up as his servant Leporello, pretending to play the mandolin in an attempt to seduce Elvira’s maid. Mozart’s reference to an Elizabethan canzonetta is masterly, as is the tongue-in-cheek and mischievous way that it is effortlessly thrown away.
5. Grace by Niall Morris
Grace was a girl I knew at university who, although she was English, lived with her parents in Paris. She had a very sweet hint of French accent and was a very talented artist. During one summer vacation, she went back to Paris and decided she didn’t want to return to study in London. I was broken hearted for a while – and just a bit angry – but time healed the wounds.
6. Mi Mancherai (Il Postino) by Luis Enrique Bacalov
The 1994 classic film, Il Postino, tells the story of real-life Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and his relationship with the simple postman who, through his daily visits delivering the mail, develops a passion for poetry. The score, written by Luis Enrique Bacalov, won the Academy Award for the Best Original Music and the theme tune was turned into a song specifically for Josh Groban.
7. Interlude by Niall Morris
This is a short musical piece just waiting to be theme tune to something wonderful!
8. Can’t Help Lovin’ that Man of Mine (Show Boat) by Jerome Kerns & Oscar Hammerstien 11
I think sometimes you have to push the boundaries a little as long as no one
gets hurt! I enjoy singing this famous torch-song from the wonderful musical
Show Boat, set on the fictitious Cotton Blossom in the 1880s.
I hope people are amused!
9. Torna a Surriento by Ernesto de Curtis
There’s nothing quite like the Bay of Naples for romance. Enrico Caruso, the city’s most famous son, put this song firmly on the map as he described the shimmering water and the sun sinking over the island of Capri.
10. East Meets West by Niall Morris
Sometimes – not often – you fall in love with someone who you have never spoken to and probably never will. That’s the premise of this song. Love can often be at its strongest when it’s entirely in our imagination.
11.Ah! Mes Amis (La Fille de Regiment) by Donizetti
Operatic plots are notoriously far-fetched but Donizetti really didn’t mind as long as he had a vehicle for his sensational bel canto music. Marie, the heroine, is found on the battlefield as a baby and adopted by the soldiers, hence her title ‘the daughter of the regiment’ (see what I mean?). Tonio enlists into the army in order the be close to his girlfriend but things don’t go that smoothly. However, the main reason this aria is famous is undoubtedly for it’s nine top Cs. It’s a great show-stopper and many famous tenors send their audiences home with those top notes ringing in their ears!
12. Guten Abend by Brahms
Goodnight, sleep tight!
Thanks for reading