Why this tune?
For Tunes on Tuesday this week, I went back to the New Year’s song I wrote originally at the end of 2022, making some changes to the lyrics to clean up the rhymes and make it a bit easier to sing. By “clean up” I mean trying to ensure that all of the rhymes in the song are exact ones, not the “near” rhyming you hear in many contemporary songs. I have the late Alan Bergman z”l to thank for that in part. When I met him in 2023 after winning the Bergman lyric award from the ASCAP Foundation, he shared his dislike of “false” rhymes (and found a couple in my winning song). I agree with Alan that this style of song works best with exact rhymes, so I made the appropriate adjustments.
I’ll be performing this one twice in the new year on St Croix, at a Jazz Vespers show and a the new jazz club at the Galleon on island.
If you decide, despite the guidance of this song, to make some resolutions of your own, I wish you success in keeping them. For everyone, best wishes for a safe, sane, and swinging 2026.
Oren Levine, jazz pianist and songwriter 