The original lyrics had four verses, of which only two are heard on the original recording. He overheard someone at the party saying to a woman, "You've turned a whiter shade of pale", and the phrase stuck in his mind. Keith Reid got the title and starting point for the song at a party. Cover versions of the song have also been featured in many films, for example, by King Curtis in Withnail and I and by Annie Lennox in The Net. The song has been included in many music compilations over the decades and has also been used in the soundtracks of numerous films and television shows, including The Big Chill, Purple Haze, Breaking the Waves, The Boat That Rocked, Tour of Duty, House M.D., Martin Scorsese's segment of New York Stories, Stonewall, Oblivion, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary series The Vietnam War and the 2022 limited series The Offer. In 2009, it was reported as the most played song in the last 75 years in public places in the UK. In 2004, the performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited recognised it as the most-played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years and Rolling Stone placed it 57th on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In 1998, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1977, the song was named joint winner (along with Queen's " Bohemian Rhapsody") of "The Best British Pop Single 1952–1977" at the Brit Awards. In 2009, Fisher won co-writing credit for the music in a unanimous ruling from the Law Lords. Originally, the writing credits only listed Brooker and Reid. With its Bach-derived instrumental melody, soulful vocals, and unusual lyrics, the music of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was composed by Gary Brooker and Matthew Fisher, while the lyrics were written by Keith Reid. In the years since, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has become an enduring classic, with more than 1,000 known cover versions by other artists. One of the anthems of the 1967 Summer of Love, it is one of the most commercially successful singles in history, having sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Without much promotion, it reached number 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The single reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 8 June and stayed there for six weeks. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into." A Whiter Shade of Pale" is a song by the English rock band Procol Harum that was issued as their debut record on. And it’s making up the puzzle that fits the piece you’ve got. In this case, I had that title, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale,’ and I thought, There’s a song here. It’s got a thread running through it….I feel with songs that you’re given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. Keith Reid, who wrote the lyrics, said about the song (from songfacts): It is believed to mean “Beyond these far off things” in (misspelled) Latin. Procol Harum – named after a Burmese cat belonging to a friend of the group’s manager. The song was written in 1967, before the Summer of Love and became one of its anthems. The first and most famous hit single of the early progressive rock group Procol HarumĪnd found on the album with the same name.
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