Mark Pentleton

Today’s song is the love theme from The Godfather, also known as Speak softly, love. The instrumental version first featured in the 1972 film and was written by Nino Rota. The theme also featured in the sequels and it was sung in Sicilian dialect in The Godfather 3.

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Today’s song for Good Friday comes from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and is the song sung by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane as he contemplates what is in front of him. I’ve always enjoyed playing this song – it’s a really powerful piece and I hope you enjoy listening!

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Very late with this one today – sorry, it’s been a bit of a mad day! This Neil Diamond song was included in the soundtrack of the film The Jazz Singer in 1980 and hopefully fulfils the request from Duncan from Apple with whom I was working last week in South Africa. It’s not quite [...]

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This song was originally composed in 1953 as ¿Quién será? (Who will it be?) by the Mexican composer and bandleader Pablo Beltrán Ruiz. An English-language version was released in 1954 by Dean Martin and since then it’s been covered by hundreds of artists, perhaps most famously by Michael Bublé in 2003. I hope you enjoy [...]

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Written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David in 1967 originally for Dionne Warwick, this is one of those songs which has the musical equivalent of a few imperfect subjunctives! There is a bar of 10/4 in the verse, and the chorus is in 11/4 (2 bars of 4/4 and a bar of 3/4). It was [...]

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Wales yesterday and Mexico today… Bésame mucho was written in 1940 by Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez. For those of you who like singing along to my performances, here are the lyrics with a translation below. It somehow sounds so much better in Spanish, especially with that imperfect subjunctive in the second line!
Bésame, bésame mucho,
Como si [...]

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Today’s song is Fragile by Sting from the 1987 album …Nothing like the sun. It was also recorded in Spanish and Portuguese and was dedicated to Ben Linder, an American civil engineer who was killed by the Contras while he was working on a hydroelectric project in Nicaragua in 1987.

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This song always reminds me of the year I spent in France in 1991-92. Although it dates from 1977 originally, it’s one of those French classics which was always played on the radio, and it was only when I was living in France that I discovered Cabrel. Here’s one version of the original. J’espère que [...]

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Since I’m in London this week I thought I’d do something a bit theatrical, so here’s one of the lesser-known songs from Phantom of the Opera. If anyone is coming to this blog having been at one of my presentations this week, then you may want to find out more about 365songs here.
This evening I’m [...]

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