Yesterday Once More

8 Nov 2016

Flowers

Hi Listeners

This week our theme is ‘Flowers’. Songwriters and singers create many songs with flowery titles. There are general songs with ‘flowers’ in the title and other songs with specific flowers in their titles. By far the most ubiquitous flower is the rose. Songs with ‘rose’ in the title make up about half of the songs in this week’s program. So why the rose? I think partly because the rose has a significance (beyond being a mere flower) in our culture. I also think it scans well in songs – it’s easy to fit into a lyric than most other flower names.

General flower songs include the Cowsills’ ‘I Love The Flower Girl’ and Bobby Darin’s poignant ‘Artificial Flowers’. Other flowers are buttercups (Build Me Up Buttercup), lilies (Lily The Pink), daisies (Daisy Jane) and forget me nots (Forget Me Not). But, it’s the roses who dominate. Not just red roses but also yellow roses (Yellow Rose Of Texas).

It’s interesting that the rose is used as a metaphor in most of the songs. Whether it’s awards (No Roses For Michael) or the use of rose-coloured (to see the world in a positive way) (Rose Coloured Glasses) roses are used o signify something else. Barbra Streisand depicted the idea of coming second always in ‘Second Hand Rose’ while Lynne Anderson invokes the popular saying ‘I Never Promised You A Rose Garden’. Of interest this week are two forgotten Aussie singers – Greg Anderson (No Roses For Michael – the them of a televison program) and Bandstand regular, Sandy Scott, with his hit ‘Wallpaper Roses’.

Playlist

* Build Me Up Buttercup – the Foundations
* Yellow Rose Of Texas – Mitch Miller Orch
* No Roses For Michael – Greg Anderson
* Artificial Flowers – Bobby Darin
* I Love The Flower Girl – Cowsills
* Lily The Pink – Scaffold
* Daisy Jane – America
* Forget Me Not – Kalin Twins
* Rose= Coloured Glasses – Johnny Farnham
* Second Hand Rose – Barbra Streisand
* I Never Promised You A Rose Garden – Lynne Anderson
* Wallpaper Roses – Sandy Scott