Well, Broadsheet readers, are you all enjoying the winter season?
With weather forecasts predicting sneachta this weekend, we are giving away a hearty €25 Golden Discs voucher to warm the cockles of your wallet.
Simply tell me below what is your favourite song featuring snow?
Here’s mine.
The winner will be chosen by my reindeer.
Lines MUST close at 6am [Sunday].
Please include a video link where possible.
Last week’s voucher winner here
Sponsored Link
Souvenirs – John Prine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZE4IqeXnT8
“All the snow has turned to water,
Christmas days have come and gone…”
Informer – Snow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSffz_bl6zo
I once rapped my way through a karaoke version of this – it does not work with a south Dublin accent
https://youtu.be/Ht0lPunQrTo
A-ha Angel in the snow
It’s Friday
So it must be Wayne and Wanda’s Let it snow
Oops
https://youtu.be/YTWQ84zmcQE
has to be Johnny Cash’s Cocaine Blues, telling the story of poor old Willy Lee who
“Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down”
convicted of murder in the first degree, he gets sentenced to 99 years in Folsom, it ends with some sage advice:
“Come on you’ve gotta listen unto me
Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq344ks1ieg
Awful amount of illegal stuff going on in that there song.
There’s SNOW business like show business…
I’ll get my coat. And with snow forecast, I’ll get me hat and scarf too…
First Snow in Kokomo – Aretha Franklin
Let it trickle calmly into your evening…
https://youtu.be/zWJgKhJnYKs
“I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coats
With scarves of red tied ’round their throats
To keep their little heads from falling in the snow
And I turned ’round and there you go
And Michael, you would fall and turn the white snow red
As strawberries in the summertime”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE
Fleet Foxes ….fantastic
You get my vote. A glorious song.
The Bangles cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter”
A slightly more rockish track from Sion and Garfunkel, what I love about the Bangles version, is that is one of few times that more than of the band performing vocals with all four singing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxrwImCJCqk
susanna hoffs- now there was a source of many an impure thought in the mind of the young BB
The first time I saw Siobhan Fahey I thought my willy was broken
Banarama caused similar effects as Bangles to many a young groin
Wasn’t it working by then Bert?
Snowing on Raton – the late, great Townes Van Zandt
https://youtu.be/V0JWdsm5jJg
Shall I cast my dreams upon your love, babe?
Sometimes it Snows in April – Prince.
Late and lamented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBThX4o2_KI
let it snow by Dean martin. I actually got jiggy jiggy with a lost love while it snowed outside and this was playing
Snow – Informer
Choooon!
https://youtu.be/TSffz_bl6zo
Leaky Boom Boom De Gea.
Get out, I got there first!!
Damn it! Mediocre minds think alike.
The Pretenders – 2000 miles
https://youtu.be/AEyGZlBdkaA
eh, hello…. snow in the TITLE
“Simply tell me below what is your favourite song featuring snow?”
TITLE, paulus, song TITLE
This is my favourite by Nick Cave. It gets better with age. . Fifteen feet of pure white snow. ⛄
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sfhvxTZ0wo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THrEwPJFLgU
The lyrics say it all
Linkin Park, My December
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIfSmtvob7w
RIP Chester
OOOh, I got this, I have to have this. Favouite (and best) song featuring snow is this simply beuatiful song by The Leisure Society – Last of the Melting Snow. Shearwater’s Snow Leopard get’s an honorable mention, but this one is just lovely in every way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhHXAIGhQQ
Ok, not mentioned in either the title or the song, but a great big snowman in the background of the video!
And it’s ABBA, so I really don’t care! I also always preferred Frida, but that’s me: brunettes all the way!
It is just a great song, and I know it is not in theme, but please enjoy!
Chiquitita, ABBA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QqMKe3rwY&ab_channel=AbbaVEVO
Cocaine
Clapton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-YOTJoKz_o
Oh. right.
It has to be Snow in San Anselmo by Van Morrison. Lovely trippy song from Hard nose the highway.
Surely.. ❄ https://youtu.be/E9i0sNbaWNY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA_EijC-7Lw
‘Watching Trees’ by Eleven Pond is a mid-80’s synth pop classic that should have been a hit
I want to be, in a tree
Watching you, watching trees
Memories of the trees
Watching you, watching me
I stand alone in the cold
Of an old, old train station
It was cold in the snow
Wind did blow, all alone
White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It) – Grandma.. Flash & Melle Mel
Original Long Version – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bCdrDhUjPo
Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsTJaP2tC0A
“Pure as the driven snow”
:-J
The Specials – Blank Expression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxkfndap5Q
Snow is falling all around
Seven o’clock and the roads are blocked
So I walk downtown
There’s no-one around
I walk in a bar and immediately
I sense danger
You look at me girl, as if I was some kind of a
A total stranger
Where did you get that blank
Expression on your face?
Fionn Regan – Snowy Atlas Mountains
https://youtu.be/mkiNBy4AK_k
Been a bad day, in a bad week! Not that that matters.
As a result, all I can say is Let it snow!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOijmUPJKcE&ab_channel=rwdsmail
https://youtu.be/QR07p1OtCkw
My favourite U2 song. There is no tune ever written that can’t be improved by a brass section, and this just rocks
“So I packed my bags
Brushed my cap
Walked out into the world
Seventeen years old
Never kissed a girl
Took the train to Voronezh
That was as far as it would go
Changed my sacks for a uniform
Bit my lip against the snow…”
The Waterboys – Red Army Blues
https://youtu.be/ypPrKnUew44
The Snows They Melt The Soonest – Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh & Ger O Donnell
There’s so many versions of this traditional English folk song that dates back to at least the early 1800s but this one is as good as any I’ve heard. Recorded two months ago – just two people in a living room with a guitar and a shruti box.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLabMWNiZQg
An Sciobairín · Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh (with Séamus Begley)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHtbIRXC5V4
Ye know the line about the snowy ground…
Very lovely. Thanks.
Nice one. He did some nice work with Emma Langford in the same kind of setting.
Like Snow, or sniff sniff snow?
The Fox in the Snow
from Belle And Sebastian’s superb
“If You’re Feeling Sinister”
https://youtu.be/rmClYjK1CgA
A Tory Island fishermen went out one day and was struggling to make a catch. He went to places he’d never fished before, and cast his net again and got a heavy catch. When he pulled it in, there was a woman in the net. He brought her back home, took the cloak she wore and warmed her, and she learned to speak and laugh. He married her, and hid away the cloak in a chest.
Two children were born to them. One day a few years later the children were playing and opened the chest and found the cloak. “Mammy, Mammy, put it on, you’ll look lovely” – but as soon as she had the cloak she fled back to the sea, and lost all her humanity – including the ability to laugh. But she longed for her children, and would swim along the shore singing to them, while the children ran and sang back to her.
This is a song traditionally sung as a lullaby to children whose mother has died.
Is cosúil gur mheath tú nó gur thréig tú an greann
(You seem to be pining and forsaking the fun)
Tá an sneachta go freasach fá bhéal na n-abhainn
(The snow is pounding down at the mouth of the river)
Do chúl buí daite is do bhéilín sámh
(Your golden hair and your sweet mouth)
Siúd chugaibh Mary Chinidh ‘s í ‘ndiaidh an Éirne ‘shnámh
(Here’s to you, Mary Kenny, swimming against the tide)
A mháithrín mhilis duirt Máire bhán
(Sweet mother, said fair-haired Mary)
Fá bhruach an chladaigh ‘s fá bhéal na trá
(From the banks of the ocean and the mouth of the strand)
Maighdean mhara mo mhaithrín ard
(My noble mother is a mermaid)
Siúd chugaibh Mary Chinidh ‘s í ‘ndiaidh an Éirne ‘shnámh
(Here’s to you, Mary Kenny, swimming against the tide)
Tá mise tuirseach agus beidh go lá
(I’m tired and and will be till dawn)
Mo Mháire bhroinngheal ‘s mo Phádraig bán
(My grown-up Mary and my fair-haired Patrick)
Ar bharr na dtonna ‘s fá bhéal na trá
(On the peaks of the waves and at the mouth of the strand)
Siúd chugaibh Mary Chinidh ‘s í ‘ndiaidh an Éirne ‘shnámh
(Here’s to you, Mary Kenny, swimming against the tide)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg2ZOcbGSdY
So many possibilities. So hard to choose.
I would have thought this would have been suggested already but I see it hasn’t! The prize MUST be mine at last…
Tori Amos – Winter
Snow can wait, I forgot my mittens
Wipe my nose, get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter
I put my hand in my father’s glove
I run off where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping beauty trips me with a frown
I hear a voice “You must learn to stand up for yourself”
“‘Cause I can’t always be around”
He says when you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
‘Cause things are gonna change so fast
https://music.apple.com/ie/music-video/winter/129623954
https://youtu.be/_PDlGUdDF8Y
I never fail to be moved by this beautiful ode to the passage time, growing up and the wisdom of a parent.
Stunning musicianship, singing, profound lyrics and snow mentioned (just once, in the first line)
“Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
“It’s too quiet in here and I’m beginning to freeze, I’ve got icicles hanging from my knees, Under 15 feet of pure white snow”
Love that line…
Also, a great vid…
https://youtu.be/4sfhvxTZ0wo
This is absolutely gorgeous, Kate Bush and her son ….Bertie :)
“The world is so loud. Keep falling. I’ll find you.”
https://youtu.be/pHO7m__8SDQ
Purple Mountains – Snow is falling in Manhatten
A beautiful song from my album of the year…a huge loss, one of the finest songwriters of all time…
https://youtu.be/50227UHWULg
Ah jayus, all that snow is so last century. Sneachta.. it’s in there.. Versatile:
https://youtu.be/gA5PWRPeMOk
And because I should win: for anyone born in this century. Also featuring the old sneachta.. Kneecap
https://youtu.be/YzphbFjIG2Y
The Roches – Frosty the Snowman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FH_R6_RJE8
New Jersey Irish stock
Belle and Sebastian – The Fox in the Snow
Not everyone’s cup of tea, Belle and Sebastian have been going since the mid nineties, they have created 10 albums and if you like their style, there’s not a bad album among the 10. The Scottish band grew their audience when their song, The Boy with the Arab Strap, was used on the credits of “Teachers”, a UK sitcom from around 2001. Delicate, soft, intricate and melodic is their signature style and The Fox is a fine example of their art. Are you a fox, a girl, a boy or a kid?
Kid in the snow, way to go
It only happens once a year
It only happens once a lifetime
Make the most of it
Second just to being born
Second to dying too
What else would you do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmClYjK1CgA
DOH!
The Decemberists – January Hymn
Maybe I should just let it be
And maybe it will all come back to me
Seeing, oh, January, oh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqDlTKqxu2w
Christy Moore – Easter Snow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFh2CCyOX_Y
A tribute to Séamus Ennis
I did not see it yet, so if I missed it I apologise. But does a snowbound siren in a winter’s dawn count? Appropriate for me today as the last few nights I had the weirdest dreams, including ones with Bart Simpson, for some reason. Sadly, I recall not the details, so it seems even my own crazy dreams will get me nowhere :)
But I do recall that Paul Brady is an incredible songwriter and performer. Allow me to share one of my favourite live performances, from Later with Jules Holland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piv3tauJo2M&ab_channel=micromaid
Late to the party, but for anyone still reading, Galaxie 500’s version of Yoko Ono’s ‘Listen, The Snow Is Falling’ is a thing of wintry beauty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX-o3rN99pI