The Year In Music: 19th April

I'll Remember April, Julie London (1956)

Suddenly – blossom. Pop! Pink. The tumbling upwards of grass. Two persistent tall daffodils, aliens, fighting through the green blades. Laundry outside, dry in an hour. It happens so quickly, and it goes.

I can’t hold onto it. My forty-fifth spring slips through my fingers.

Just look at her. Listen to her. Her voice like smoke curling through warm urban streets, perfuming the air, rolling over.

It feels odd that I haven’t written about Julie London before, given she made Calendar Girl, an album with cover art like a restrained Playboy year-special, each of its songs zoning into obvious sentiments or well-soused metaphors about each month. But after It's June in January (“because I'm in love”), February Brings The Rain (“Here am I without a valentine”), Melancholy March (“your clouds are crying”), I’ll Remember April (a jazz standard from 1942, originally sung by Dick Foran in Abbott and Costello comedy Ride 'Em Cowboy, before being interpreted by Miles Davis, Lee Konitz, Dinah Washington, all the big guys and gals) has a lyric that feels slightly more sophisticated.

Its protagonist here delivers her words with a certain cynicism, or some might say a maturity, as she recognises a feeling of nostalgia in the present moment, a knowledge that however good this things feels like now, it’s unlikely to feel this way again.

This lovely day will lengthen into evening/
We'll sigh good-bye to all we've ever had/
Alone where we have walked together/
I'll remember April and be glad…