A_Brief_History_of_“Auld_Lang_Syne”_Auld_Lang_Syne

E very New Year’s
champagne has been popped, ball has dropped
ing very merry indeed, revelers queue up the same song they’ve been queuing up for decades. You know the one—it makes you cry, even though you don’t understand it and know almost none of the words.
2 A handful of options pop up when you search for the meaning of “auld lang syne”: “times/days gone by,” “old time’s sake,” “long long times/ago,” and
6 It’s unclear whether Johnson linked Burns to the song in his credits, but by the time the book was published in 1796, the poet was dead. He’d never know that those words would eventually help secure his own cultural immortal-ity.
Name that tune
7 The words aren’t the only element that evolved over the years; it’s be-lieved that the original tune is different than the one we drunkenly hum along to today. Originally, the song had a more traditional folk sound, one that can be heard in (of all things) 2008’s Sex and the City movie. This version is still performed today, but with much less frequency than the New Year stand-ard. The melody we all know was used at the suggestion of music publisher George Thompson.。