Tuesday, April 21, 2020

It'll Be Alright...

So says B J Thomas in 'Rock and Roll Lullaby'. This is one of his lesser known songs but is a really great one. The melody, the lyrics, and, of course, his voice. All make for perfect music.

 "Rock and Roll Lullaby" is a song written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil that was a 1972 hit single performed by B. J. Thomas. "Rock and Roll Lullaby" reached number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was Thomas's third number one on the Easy Listening chart, where it spent one week in March 1972. The song was a smash-hit in Brazil, because of its appearance as love theme in the soap opera Selva de Pedra.

The song is sung in a first-person narrative of an adolescent or adult raised by single teenage mother since birth during the early years of rock-and-roll. Despite the bleakness of their situation, whenever the child cries, the mother sings him to sleep with a 'sha-na-na-na-na-na-na, it'll be all right...sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, just hold on tight'. In the second verse, the narrator calls attention that despite hardships, they'd 'dream of better mornings when Mama sang her song', and that while it didn't make sense to try to recall the words, the loving meaning beneath them was all that mattered. 



Take a listen:


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