The stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve usually sounds like this:
This is Auld Lang Syne,
a song that represents the emotional conclusion to another year.
But it might surprise you to know, it's also a soccer anthem in the Netherlands.
Or in Japan, it's a traditional song about fireflies.
And the original was written centuries ago, as a Scottish celebration song.
So how did this song, that's managed to spread across the world, become the song we sing
when the ball drops?
What does this song mean?
My whole life, I don't know what this song means.
A lot of people share this confusion about Auld Lang Syne, because the lyrics are sort
of hard to figure out.
Let's start with the title.
Auld Lang Syne.
Individually these words mean "Old Long Since",
which taken together, translate to something
like "For old time's sake."
It's written in Scots, a language spoken by about a million people in Scotland today.
The rest of the lyrics are a mix of English and Scots words, like "And there's a hand,
my trusty feire, And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,".
What is that?
So "feire" means friend.
"Tak' a right gude-willie waught," so, a waught related to the word "draft," in English, would
be a good pint of beer I imagine.
This song asks you to remember people from your past and raise a toast to them, which
made it a popular song to sing at New Year's and other celebrations.
And that line about taking your friend's hand?
That's related to a traditional dance British people still do today.
The guy who popularized this song was one of Scotland's most famous exports: Robert Burns.
Burns was a poet writing in the 1700's, just after Scotland and England unified to create
the kingdom of Great Britain.
He witnessed the decline of traditional Scottish culture in favor of English norms.
So he devoted the end of his life to preserving this dying culture, by traveling the country
to collect traditional poetry and songs to get them published.
Auld Lang Syne was one of those songs.
In a 1793 letter to his music publisher George Thomson, Burns claimed he wrote down the lyrics
after hearing an old man singing it.
He called Auld Lang Syne "an old song about the olden times."
And he made sure Thomson kept the Scots words in the song, arguing "There is a naievete,
a pastoral simplicity, in a slight intermixture of Scots words and phraseology."
And this song, Auld Lang Syne, is doing a great job of tying in with the original idea
of collecting folk songs, preserving heritage, celebrating heritage.
Auld Lang Syne was republished in countless song books worldwide over the centuries and
because of Burns, the Scots words are still in there.
And even if you don't know the history behind them, you can still sort of figure out what
the song is saying.
Anyway, it's about old friends.
Why has a song that people don't really understand become so widespread?
For starters, the melody of Auld Lang Syne is simple, making it easy to sing along to
and easy to adapt into other musical styles.
Which is why it can become a soul song,
or a bluegrass song,
or rock 'n roll.
And because it's uncomplicated and melodic, the song was easy to put with different lyrics.
Like in the US in the Civil War era, it became a song about a wish for the war to end.
And it was also a popular anti-slavery ballad.
It took on new meanings in languages in other parts of the world, which is why it's in places
you might not expect, like that soccer anthem in the Netherlands.
Or a graduation song in parts of Asia.
And it was South Korea's national anthem until 1948.
No matter what the language or lyrics are, Auld Lang Syne's popularity also has something
to do with its nostalgic feeling.
The song itself is often used in the popular context in an even more overtly sad way.
If you look at the words, it's quite nostalgic as a song and that's its attraction.
Which is why it started showing up in countless classic movies, usually to mark an emotional
scene.
Like in this 1937 Shirley Temple movie, when her character consoles a dying soldier by
singing Auld Lang Syne.
And the director Frank Capra used it for sentimental moments in at least 3 of his films.
But in the US, the song is best known for one thing:
"Happy New Year."
And for that, we can thank Mr. New Year's Eve himself, Guy Lombardo.
In 1928, Lombardo and his orchestra, The Royal Canadians, started a popular New Year's Eve
radio show, broadcast from the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.
This meant that Americans all over the country tuned in from their home radios to listen
to the same music on New Year's Eve.
And at the stroke of midnight, Lombardo played their version of Auld Lang Syne.
Lombardo continued that tradition for nearly 50 years and when Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve
started on TV in 1973, he would play Auld Lang Syne at midnight too.
And after Clark, Ryan Seacrest did the same.
So now at midnight, right after the ball drops, this is what you hear.
It's still Lombardo's version.
And this is why, for many, the song is so singularly associated with the nostalgia of
another year past.
So when this new year rolls around, even if you don't know all the words, sing along anyway.
You won't be alone.