Fields Of Gold

Sometimes you think you know a song so well that in actual fact you don't really know it at all. By that I mean there are songs that I have always thought were around for ever, which are decades old and whose composition originated from a certain country. One song that I have forever thought was both of Irish origin and had been around for many, many years is Fields Of Gold. The song is in fact from 1993 and written by Sting. It was a number 23 hit for him on the Billboard Hot 100 and 16 in the UK. Fields Of Gold was taken from his Ten Summoner's Tales album. That album also featured Shape Of My Heart which Sugababes sampled on their single Shape. A few days ago I did a post on the pop group Six. This was the group Nadine Coyle was almost a member of. Nadine went on to compete and win her place in Girls Aloud. Early in this decade Nadine appeared on several TV shows including The John Daly Show in Northern Ireland and on The Late Late Show here in Dublin. On both shows she sang Fields Of Gold. It was by then a song that was well known because of Eva Cassidy as well as Sting's original version. I think Nadine made the song so much her own, that since then, I have always thought it was an Irish song. I think that song endeared audiences, especially those of us here in all of Ireland, to Nadine. There are clips of Nadine singing the song on the shows mentioned but the audio isn't great. Below is a lovely, clear version. It is a song that makes me sad each time I hear it. It really is a beautifully composed song.

Streetwalker

There have been some great posts on Michael Jackson on pop blogs over the past few days. I much prefer reading them than most of what is in the newspapers. On the day after his death the Metro newspaper had Billie Jean written as Billy Jean. I know it's a free newspaper but a spelling error like that is really unfortunate. I know there are a thousand examples of blogs misspelling a word but newspapers only have one chance on major news stories like that. Today on Last.FM the top ten most listened to Michael songs through their website were as follows:

1:Billie Jean - 59,062 2: Beat It - 57,062 3: Thriller - 55,093 4: Smooth Criminal - 37,978 5: Bad - 35,887 6: Black Or White - 34,954 7: The Way You Make Me Feel - 30,198 8: Man In The Mirror - 28,381 9: Rock With You - 26,034 10: Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' - 25,968

The play counts are this week only. That list will change daily now. 3 of those songs in the top ten are from Bad. I listened to songs from the special edition of Bad again last night. One song that I never was that fond of was Another Part Of Me. Interestingly, that song nearly wasn't on the album as Michael preferred the song Streetwalker and at the end of the day Michael's manager choose Another Part Of Me over Streetwalker. The story of the song's history is here. Here's the wonderful Streetwalker.