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Music Notes #1081449 added December 24, 2024 at 7:38am
Restrictions: None
Good King Wenceslas, by Loreena McKennit
My first track chosen for Jeff's "Invalid Item"  is Good King Wenceslas , by Loreena McKennit.
This is beyond a doubt my favorite Christmas carol of all time. The uplifting story of a charitable king and his humble page who was granted a miracle so he could help carry out a good deed, combined with the wonderful melody, is really something special. This particular version captures the essence of what makes it so magical, with the lady's harmonious voice and a blending of strings, drums and bells which lend a medieval vibe.
Even the cover art for her album is beautiful, showing a winter forest with animals gathered around.
I have at least two stories behind this song. The first is how I discovered it at all. I noticed it years ago playing in a clothing store I shop at regularly. But whenever I heard it I didn't have my phone at the ready to capture a Shazam (in those days, I used Google Sound Search…) to be honest, I had a phone, but it wasn't online, and that particular clothing store never had WiFi. Long story… not only could I never get a Sound Search on it, but I could never understand any of the words to be able to look it up. Having no chorus, it didn't have a lyrical "hook" to grab onto. But I knew that was an extremely appealing classic melody I wanted to listen to better.
So one day it played and I did something different: I recorded it. My recording was brief and muffled and indistinct, but I was determined to find that song. I went online and looked for a place where I could upload an audio file for identification. No automated software could recognize my sample (one site suggested weird Russian things…)
Finally I found a French site called WatZatSong, where they crowdsource from a global community of music lovers to find and label song samples. From there it didn't take more than a couple days before someone told me it was Loreena McKennit's Good King Wenceslas.
The next story is from 2020, when I suggested this specific track to my boss during the holiday season. I thought I'd like to hear it on his super duper sound system which he enjoyed using while we worked. Imagine my embarrassment when instead of the elegant, classy Loreena McKennit version, he blasted out some beery-voiced Irish bar doggerel recording of Good King Wenceslas! Turns out her version wasn't available on Spotify, and he didn't have the sense to pull it up on YouTube instead. It's the kind of thing that looking back on it is funny, but at the time I was getting close to a nervous breakdown from overwork and, in my tunnel vision, thought it was the worst thing that could've possibly happened. Ugh.
Anyway, enjoy. This is my favorite rendition of it for good reason, trust me. I should perhaps take some time to explore her music… which reminds me, I did listen to one other track she made, but that's quite another story.
Words: 521.
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