![]() In more recent music culture, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince sampled this song in their hip-hop album Code Red (released in 1993) in a song called "Twinkle, Twinkle (I'm Not a Star)." The most famous Country interpretation of the song is probably " Someone Else's Star," recorded by Bryan White in 1995. In another adaptation, "Little Star" by The Elegants reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958. It makes an appearance in the music of Louis Armstrong's " What A Wonderful World," where a large portion of the melody is quoted in his vocal line, transformed by the use of swing rhythms rather than the conventional straight-eights. But "Twinkle, Twinkle" has also seeped into popular music culture throughout the years. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" shares its tune with two other nursery rhymes, namely "The Alphabet Song," and a variation of it in "Baa, baa, black sheep," as well as a variety of Christmas songs from various places in Europe including Germany, Hungary, Spain and The Netherlands. That's right, Led Zeppelin weren't the only ones accused of masking the words of the Devil. It has also been argued that "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are," when played backwards, sounds like "I wish there was no Allah," and in this way the poem has led to widespread atheism among children. With the widespread educational use of this song in the present day western world, this may be one of the first descriptive analogies children come across in their formative years, freeing many children's imaginations in relation to language for the first time. Jane Taylor is very rarely credited with the poetry of this song, which many assume to be a traditional.Īlthough fairly literal, the lyrics of "The Star" contain the simile "like a diamond in the sky." This was possibly intended by the author to facilitate a child's development of imaginative association. The poem was first published with the music in The Singing Master: First Class Tune Book in 1838. This poem was first published in a book called Rhymes for the Nursery, which was written and compiled by Jane and her sister Ann Taylor. I'm sure people have written long books about it.The traditional song "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" was based on a poem called "The Star," written in 1806 by the English poet and novelist Jane Taylor, one of the lesser-known poets of the Romantic era. There's an element of tradition of course, but there's more to it than that. But if it was easy to exactly quantify what makes these melodies so timeless, then we'd all be writing them. "Amazing Grace" and "Oh when the saints" function very differently harmonically to "Twinkle Twinkle", but the point I just made applies to them both. I think it's just one of those melodies like "oh when the saints" "amazing grace" "O tannenbaum/Oh Christmas Tree/The red flag etc." - which knows exactly what it is, doesn't have any unnecessary frills: every note is pretty much there for a purpose, and it makes them pretty timeless. The harmonic structure is perfectly resolved: I'd be hard pressed to think of a more "complete" sounding short melody. ![]() It has a sort of tension and release, with the middle section being reassuringly answered by the same melodic phrase that came at the beginning. It's conversational, it sort of raises a question and answers it. The question as to why twinkle twinkle is such a memorable and well loved melody is despite its simplicity is difficult to answer without either being too technical or too hand-wavy, but suffice to say that it packs a lot of content into it short and sweet package. Also more subjectively, it's a lovely little melody, it's not surprising it's stuck around. It's rhythmically repetitive and pretty much as simple as you can get: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (8) 圆 which makes it very easy to put words to, and very easy to remember. ![]() This particular melody? Musically, it's simple, memorable, and easy for children and adults to sing and play because of its short range (6 notes, less than an octave). often use existing melodies that are already well remembered, and just change the words, this happens with a lot of melodies. ![]() ![]() Nursery rhymes, sport chants, folk songs, political rally songs etc. ![]()
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