So.
We've heard about the first dance we ended up with, and the one that got away...
...and the retrospective musical narcissism continues. It's time for the first dance we very, very nearly had. We chose and settled on this one for most of our engagement. We even practised. This is the Crying Song.
To this day I do not know why The Crying Song makes us cry. We only picked it as our first dance because one of us said one day "well, what about this...?" and then we both said, at exactly the same time, "noooo, I'll CRY!". Then the discovery that we had sat independently at different times crying at this bloody song made it all feel like *a moment* - a This Is Your Song *moment*.
But actually, Crying Song is 4 minutes long. Nobody wants to watch a newly married couple bobbling about uncomfortably on a dance floor sobbing and snotting over each other for 4 whole minutes. Or for any minutes at all, thinking about it. Because it would be horrible.
Still, it is a beautiful song. And in a way now, after the first dance debacle, it is our song, and all the more personal for not stumbling around self-consciously to it in front of all our friends and family.....
If you've never heard it before, press play. I have no bloody idea what maps have to do with anything, but that refrain "They don't love you like I love you"... oh BOO HOO look I'm off again. For God's sake.
Anyway. It strikes me that I can justify a series of self-indulgent First Dance Fridays and finally get off my chest the myriad songs that I loved and would have chosen... and maybe Sam can do his. And other people too. So (she shouts into the void) if you have a first dance story to tell, or an Our Song story to tell.... or just any suitable rambling about an amazing song that might be first dance appropriate... hit me up.
The snottier the better.
we wanted Band of Horses 'No one's gonna love you', but we realised, a, I would be crying with emotion all the way through it and b, it goes on to talk about everything falling apart. Which wasn't quite the mood we were going for. But we put it on the wedding favour CD anyway, and it's now a new fav tune of my 75 y/o grandma.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how many beautiful songs are actually SO inappropriate when you start listening to the lyrics (like, how many people have Every Breath You Take as a first dance? Is it not about psychopathic obession?) However, you got your grandma into Band of Horses? This is VERY cool!
ReplyDeletePx
Oh, I love this. I haven't heard it in an AGE.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who always wanted Antony and the Johnsons' Fistful of Love as a first dance. Then she realised it was about domestic violence. REJECT!
I loves me a good cover. Here's the Wakey! Wakey! version of this one. All very nice on the piano and that.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utC0bZQAirE
@Laura ARGH that's even worse than Sting singing about stalking someone....
ReplyDelete@Richard I seriously thought that was going to be a Wakefield homage!! Was expecting Dugong/Nathaniel Green version....(Rayne will understand....)
Our first dance was totally unplanned. In fact I was adamantly against the idea of making a spectacle of ourselves shuffling around like kids at an underage disco while trapped inside a circle of camcorder-wielding relatives.
ReplyDeleteMy dad said a few words after the meal, then when he finished our laptop playlist came back on and the groom stood up to go to the bathroom. Only the song happened to be a smoochy Louis Armstrong number and everyone was looking at us expecting us to dance. So we said fuck it, why not, it seemed to make sense at the time!
Neither of us have the first clue how to dance but found ourselves slow dancing to "Blueberry Hill" and having a ball (sorry). Weddings are strange things.
Thanks for the insightful and beautifully-penned (-keyboarded?) blog Penny! Reading it makes me feel like a rockstar by proxy :)
awesome blog, do you have twitter or facebook? i will bookmark this page thanks.
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