Without A Song In My Heart

I am very sleepy today, having stayed out quite late celebrating at the 48 Hour Film Project "wrap party," (our film won Best Actress! hooray!) and this condition is not likely to improve, because we are completely off our heads and have decided to do the whole thing AGAIN THIS WEEKEND, this time for the Inland Empire. I've been saying that this time, we are trying to conquer an entire empire--instead of just a city--but I did like Calvin's response when I listed some of the townships in the kingdom--Rancho Cucamonga, Corona, Twentynine Palms--"And these are real places?"

So, today I'm discussing songs with the word GREEN in the title. Or, at least, that was the plan. Turns out there are about 30,000, and I don't know any of them. That was a bit surprising. I know a LOT of songs. To get a bit more specific, I found 23 songs just about green eyes (thanks for the idea, Caroline--I will discuss that further in a later post) from artists as varied as Barry Manilow and Husker Du, and I did know two of these.

One was "Green-Eyed Lady," which I hear on the radio all the time, but never knew a few key facts about:

1. It was released in 1970.
2. By a band called Sugarloaf.
3. Which was formerly called Chocolate Hair (best band name ever?)

The other one I recognized is "Green Eyes" by Coldplay, but I don't really KNOW that song; I just have a story about it. My sister is on her second marriage, and the first time she got married to a guy almost as theatrical as our family. So theatrical that he surprised her by assembling a band for their rehearsal dinner and singing "Green Eyes" to her in front of the whole assemblage. Not only had I never heard the song, I'd never heard OF it until that moment. It seemed like a really romantic gesture, though my sister seemed really embarrassed.

So imagine my surprise when years later, when she was getting married for the second time, she tells me that her fiance wants to dedicate "Green Eyes" to her at their wedding. Ever tactful (that's my sister) she said "Um, do you want to dedicate the same song that my ex-husband sang to me at my last wedding?" Which, you won't be surprised to hear, he did not. I had been thinking a simple "Oh, I find the chorus too pedestrian..." might have sufficed.

But I was more than just surprised. I was indignant. After all, I also have green eyes, and clearly no one was clamoring to sing that song to me, since I'd never even heard of it. I'm still a little bitter about that.

Can you think of any popular songs about green, Readers? I'm deliberately omitting "Greensleaves." That title never made much sense to me.