Mourning, the sacred and the secular

[Piney]

Elton John....that's another musician that's painful to listen to for me but is appropriate for this thread. 

[eight bits]

Show music is a rich vein of secular music that evokes the sense of the sacred, since the theatrical point of using music is often to express and elicit heightened emotion, and heightened emotion often accompanies the sacred.

Wartime is also a rich vein, maybe because so many people all at once have loved ones taken from them.

This song is both: a wartime musical theater number. It is from Carousel (music by Richard Rogers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) which opened in 1945 during the last months of WW II. In context, it is sung by a friend to console a new widow, and then reprised as the finale, when the couple's daughter graduates from high school (with her father's ghost in attendance).

The song has had a versatile career. It has been covered as an outright religious hymn. I might post Aretha Franklin's rendition as a status update sometime. Gladys Knight sang it at Aretha's funeral. It was done as a pop song by the Liverpuddlian group Gerry and the Pacemakers, whence it became the anthem of the Liverpool Football Club. Which brings us to this version. Liverpool FC visited Australia to play Melbourne Victory. This is the reception the visitors received. Gerry and the Pacemakers, accompanied by a chorus of more than 90,000, You'll never walk alone.

 

[+Hammerclaw]