H2O

I'm around water a lot now (with the new job.  It's going well, BTW).  So, it isn't too much of a leap to start thinking about music and songs about water.  After some thought, I realized that there are less songs about water than there are about songs about activities on or in the water.  Let's dive right in, shall we?

Starting on the west coast: try Surfin' USA with the Beach Boys.  Or, if you aren't a very good surfer, you can Wipe Out with the Surfaris.  If are prefer to stay on dry land, you could just practice the different swimming strokes to Bobby Freeman's C'Mon and Swim (1964).

But why stay out of the water, landlubber?  Join Ariel the mermaid and her aquatic friends in a cheerful Caribbean calypso rendition of Under the Sea.  This song was featured in Disney's 1989 The Little Mermaid, in which Sebastian the crab tries to convince the finned girl to stay in the sea where she belongs instead of trying to sprout legs and run off with some land prince she just met and barely knows.

Water music isn't such a new thing, though.  Just ask England's King George in 1717.  He wasn't doing so well in the popularity polls, so his advisers suggested to him that he throw a boating party on the Thames River.  The King's composer, George Frideric Handel, was given the task of writing the music for the party (all good parties need music).  When Handel's Water Music was ready for performance, the King and his buddies listened from one barge, while the musicians performed from another.  It was a huge success, and Handel's watery suites are still recognizable and popular today.

At the end of a long day of swimming, surfing, and boating the Thames, you can relax with Otis Redding, just (Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay (1967), wasting time.  Watching the boats cruise in and out of the harbour and hearing the seagulls shriek.  Redding wrote the song while literally sitting on the dock of a bay (well, maybe a houseboat).  I've read that the whistling at the end was an impromptu addition at the recording session; apparently, there was some time to fill.  Sadly, Redding died in a plane crash in Lake Monoma, (near Madison, WI) shortly after the song's release.  He never saw his song become a hit.

And with that, I'll leave you to swim around in your own thoughts.