Sep.15

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GOP 49

My Gift Is My Song: Soul Bossa Nova

A song that blends American soul and Brazilian Bossa Nova, as Quincy Jones' "Soul Bossa Nova" does, is certainly borrowing from multiple musical traditions. And the same is true of the songs we incorporated into last Friday's headlines. We shall let reader F.Y. in Ann Arbor, MI, explain it:

Each song's music "borrows" heavily from a previous work, usually something classical.

1. "It's Now or Never," by Elvis Presley, borrows from "O Sole Mio"
2. "All By Myself," by Eric Carmen, borrows from Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2
3. "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads," from Kismet, borrows from Alexander Borodin's "String Quartet in D"
4. "Because," by The Beatles, borrows from Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata"
5. "Annie's Song," by John Denver, borrows from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, Second Movement
6. "Don't You Know," by Della Reese, borrows from Puccini's La bohème
7. "Oh What a World," by Rufus Wainwright, borrows from Ravel's "Bolero"

Here are the first 10 readers to get it right:

1. J.L. in Hampton, VA
2. J.N. in Zionsville, IN
3. J.B. in Franklin, TN
4. T.J.R. in Metuchen, NJ
5. S.A. in Downey, CA
6. D.F. in Vancouver, BC, Canada
7. L.A.J. in Bourbonnais, IL
8. B.P. in Arlington Heights, IL
9. A.J. in Huddersfield, England, UK
10. M.B. in Menlo Park, CA

The difficulty of this week's theme, on a scale of 1 to 10, is probably around a 6. One of the songs is a particularly big clue, and we suspect there are some readers, including two on the list above, who will have a distinct advantage. But these are just guesses.

In case it holds your interest, we usually start with one song that suits our needs perfectly. Then we examine what "commonality" might be developed based on that song, and work backwards to find additional songs that will work for the items we plan to write. For what it is worth, the song that inspired this week's theme is "Lawyers, Guns and Money," though that is NOT the song that's a particularly big clue. Also, it was a bit trickier than we expected to find songs that unambiguously fit the theme. We considered songs by Ye, Chaka Khan and Smashing Pumpkins, but they weren't exactly on point. In any event, if you have a guess for this week's theme send it here.(Z)