What if Danny Boy was Disco

There is a moment on a 1970s dancefloor when the strings lift and nobody remembers being sad — this track hands that moment to a 1913 parlour ballad. The farewell at the song's centre is untouched; everything around it turns bittersweet and bright, with sweeping strings, a syncopated electric bass, wah guitar, grand piano, congas and short brass lifts, and a lead vocal that carries the old melody over the top of it all.

The lyric text is Frederick Weatherly's 1913 Danny Boy, in the public domain, and it is sung as printed from the first line to the last. 1

Play it when a slow song needs to move a room: a late kitchen clear-up, the long drive home, or any night that wants a familiar melody wearing unfamiliar clothes.