HOLIDAY PROGRAM - A Musical Exploration of Time

This is Shep O'Neal with a Special English program for the New Year. We present fifteen minutes of music about time.

We celebrate the new year with a few examples of music about time. You just heard a song called "Syncopated Clock."

American music writer Leroy Anderson wrote it more than fifty years ago.

Ten years later, the group Bill Haley and His Comets provided musical proof that any time on the clock is a good time to dance.

In nineteen-sixty-five, a group named the Byrds recorded a song that seemed modern. But the words are old. They are from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Countless songs have been written about time. Many songs are also about two other forces that seem just as unstoppable love and desire. This song by Jim Croce captures these emotions.

Jim Croce did not have much time to live. The singer died in an airplane crash in nineteen-seventy-three. He was thirty years old.

Another song about love and time is sung by one of the most famous groups of our time, the Rolling Stones. In this song, time is an ally.

Americans sing a traditional Scottish song at New Year's celebrations. It is "Auld Lang Syne. " Poet Robert Burns wrote it in the seventeen-hundreds. It is about keeping alive the memory of old friends.

A bandleader named Guy Lombardo helped make "Auld Lang Syne" a modern tradition. The song has become a well known signal of the beginning of another year.

This Special English program was written by Avi Arditti and produced by Lawan Davis. This is Shep O'Neal.