Songoftheday 3/15/21 - When in the springtime of the year when the trees are crowned with leaves, when the ash and oak and the birch and yew are dressed in ribbons fair...

 

 

"The Mummer's Dance" - Loreena McKennitt

from the album The Book Of Secrets (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 8 

Today's song of the day comes from Canadian singer/songwriter Loreena McKennitt, Hailing from Ontario, McKennitt moved to the midwestern province of Manitoba, where she grew to love folk and Celtic music. Signed to the independent Quinlan Road label, Loreena released her debut album Elemental in 1985. She released two more records with them before Warner Bros. bought them up for distribution in the States. Her fourth disk, The Visit, was her first to reach the Canadian album sales chart at #28 in 1991. That was followed in 1994 with The Mask In The Mirror, which was her first to catch on in the U.S., making the Billboard 200 sales tally at #143. A cut from the record, "The Bonny Swans", popped on to the Canadian singles chart at #75. 

In 1997, McKennitt returned with her sixth effort, The Book Of Secrets. An amalgam of New Age music, Celtic instrumentation, and folk music (there's a cover of "the Highwaymen" in there), the album ended up becoming huge in the New Age and up and coming World Music niche markets. A song from the record, "The Mummer's Dance", got the "Suzanne Vega" treatment, with a radio-friendly remix by DNA (who did Vega's "Tom's Diner") that got mainstream stations in America on board. The subdued electronic percussion gave the track an ambiance like the band Enigma, while not compromising her musical vision. It's like it's Enya music for those who want to dance and do witchcraft. But what it actually was is an ode to celebrate the rite of spring, not the oft-drunken mummers of Philadelphia...

"The Mummer's Dance" became McKennitt's first and only pop hit on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart in March of 1998. The song spent four weeks at #3 on Billboard's Adult Top-40 chart, while climbing to #23 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list. It even crossed over to rock radio, where the track went to #17 on the Alternative Rock chart. Internationally, went to #10 in her native Canada. The Book Of Secrets album, released in September of 1997, rose to #17 on the Billboard 200 sales chart in America and went on to sell over two million copies here. 

After losing her fiance to a tragic accident in 1998, McKennitt wouldn't release another studio album until 2006, when she returned with An Ancient Muse, which was her third top ten album in Canada and her second to make the top half of the Billboard 200 tally at #83. She would go on to release three more studio albums since, the most recent being Lost Souls in 2018, which made it to #164 here in the States.

(9/10)

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Here's Loreena performing "the Mummer's Dance" on Letterman in 1998..

 And lastly, live in concert...

 Up tomorrow: Florida boyband requests a return.