The Greatest Oldies Music

Oldies Musics

David Essex – Oh What A Circus

Friends - song and lyrics by David Essex | Spotify

About the Song

Ah, “Oh What a Circus”! This track, from the musical Gatsby, offers a completely different flavor of David Essex. While many remember him for the rock anthems like “Rock On” or the tender ballads like “Hold Me Close,” “Oh What a Circus” showcases his versatility and theatrical flair. It’s a vibrant, energetic, and slightly manic piece that perfectly captures the frenetic energy of the Roaring Twenties, the backdrop for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel, The Great Gatsby.

David Essex wasn’t just a pop star; he was a true performer, comfortable on stage as well as in the recording studio. 1 His background in musical theater shines through in “Oh What a Circus.” It’s not just a song; it’s a performance. He embodies the character, throwing himself into the role with gusto. You can almost picture him on stage, strutting and swaggering, surrounded by flapper girls and jazz musicians.

The song itself is a whirlwind of musical styles. It’s got elements of jazz, ragtime, and even a touch of vaudeville. It’s a chaotic, yet carefully orchestrated, explosion of sound that perfectly mirrors the decadent and often reckless atmosphere of the Jazz Age. The lyrics, full of colorful imagery and witty observations, paint a vivid picture of a society obsessed with pleasure and excess. It’s a world of champagne, parties, and fleeting romances, where appearances are everything and reality is often blurred.

What makes “Oh What a Circus” so captivating is its sheer exuberance. It’s a celebration of life, albeit a slightly狂乱 celebration. Essex’s performance is infectious; you can’t help but get caught up in the energy of the song. It’s a reminder that life, like a circus, can be full of surprises, thrills, and maybe even a little bit of danger. So, if you’re looking for a David Essex track that’s a little bit different, a little bit theatrical, and a whole lot of fun, then “Oh What a Circus” is definitely worth a listen. It’s a testament to his talent as a performer and his ability to inhabit a song completely. It’s a musical journey back to a bygone era, a time of glamour, extravagance, and a whole lot of razzmatazz.David Essex on the emotional turmoil being a 70s pin-up caused | Daily Mail Online

Video 

Lyrics: Oh What A Circus 

Oh what a circus! Oh what a show!
Argentina has gone to town
Over the death of an actress called Eva Peron
We’ve all gone crazy
Mourning all day and mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to get all, of the misery right

Oh what an exit! That’s how to go!
When they’re ringing your curtain down
Demand to be buried like Eva Peron
It’s quite a sunset
And good for the country in a roundabout way
We’ve made the front pages of all, the world’s papers today

But who is this Santa Evita?
Why all this howling hysterical sorrow?
What kind of goddess has lived among us?
How will we ever get by without her?

She had her moments–she had some style
The best show in town was the crowd
Outside the Casa Rosada crying, “Eva Peron”
But that’s all gone now
As soon as the smoke from the funeral clears
We’re all gonna see and howl, she did nothing for years!

Salve regina mater misericordiae
Vita dulcedo et spes nostra
Salve salve regina
Ad te clamamus exules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes
O clemens o pia

You let down your people Evita
You were supposed to have been immortal
That’s all they wanted
Not much to ask for
But in the end you could not deliver

Salve regina mater misericordiae
Vita dulcedo et spes nostra
Salve salve regina Peron
Ad te clamamus exules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes
O clemens o pia

Related Post

Elvis Presley did not always need a microphone to command attention. People who encountered him often described something harder to explain than his voice or appearance: the atmosphere seemed to change when he entered a room. Fame certainly played a part, but photographs cannot explain why so many people remembered his presence years after meeting him.

In the final days of July 1956, Elvis Presley was photographed asleep inside Memphis’s Peabody Hotel. He was only 21, yet his life had already become almost unrecognizable. Records were exploding, crowds were growing, reporters followed his every move, and another performance was always waiting. But in this photograph, none of that exists. Elvis is simply sleeping.

Some photographs of Elvis Presley are difficult to forget, and not because of his famous smile or extraordinary looks. It is his eyes. In certain pictures, the confidence disappears and something quieter takes its place. There is warmth there, but also a distance that makes you wonder what the man behind the photograph was carrying.

You Missed

Country

RONNIE MILSAP WAS HEADED FOR A DEGREE IN LAW UNTIL RAY CHARLES TOLD HIM HE WAS THROWING HIS LIFE AWAY ON A BACKUP PLAN. At the state school for the blind, counselors told the young piano prodigy that music was a gamble, a path toward poverty that would leave him reliant on government assistance for the rest of his days. They pointed toward the lecture halls of Young Harris College, where he diligently studied pre-law, preparing for a future defined by briefs and statutes rather than chords and cadence. He had the intellect to succeed, but the radio offered a different education, pulling him toward late-night gospel, the grit of rhythm and blues, and the steady, insistent thump of a country rhythm section. When he sat down with Ray Charles, the decision was no longer theoretical. Charles heard the phrasing in Milsap’s fingers and the ache in his voice, telling him plainly to quit the legal books and bet everything on the piano. It was a terrifying pivot that traded guaranteed security for the flickering promise of a Memphis studio session. He traded the courtroom for the King of the Road Hotel, walking into a Nashville club in 1972 with nothing but his hands and an instinct that refused to be silenced. He eventually scored thirty-five number-one hits, forcing country music to expand its own boundaries to make room for his soul-drenched, pop-inflected sound. He stopped looking for a safety net and started writing the language that defined an entire era of the airwaves.

Country

Most industry men in Nashville saw Bob Dylan as an outsider to be avoided, yet Johnny Cash saw the only mirror he’d ever found. There was a time when the lines in American music were drawn in permanent ink. Country stars stayed in their lane, and folk singers kept to the coffeehouses, both groups eyeing the other with a mixture of suspicion and cold indifference. But in the mid-1960s, a strange magnetism pulled two of the most singular voices of the century together. Cash, already an established giant of the Grand Ole Opry, didn’t just admire the scruffy prophet from Hibbing; he invited him inside. The gift of that guitar wasn’t merely a polite exchange between performers. It was a calculated risk. By carrying Dylan’s songs onto his own stage and eventually welcoming him into the hallowed halls of Nashville studios, Cash forced the gatekeepers to widen their perspective. The city’s session musicians, those seasoned hands who usually kept to the script, found themselves capturing the raw, unpredictable electricity of sessions that would become Blonde on Blonde. It was a collision of worlds that defied the rigid industrial logic of the time. By the time they shared the national spotlight on television, the barriers were fundamentally altered. What began in a quiet, cramped hotel room had spilled over into the mainstream, proving that the most powerful movements in music rarely start in corporate offices. They start with a handshake, a borrowed instrument, and the recognition that the song matters more than the label on the gate.

Country

BILL MONROE HANDED HIS MANDOLIN TO A SIX-YEAR-OLD BOY IN KENTUCKY, UNKNOWINGLY PASSING THE BURDEN OF TRADITION TO A CHILD WHO WOULD LATER DEFINE THE MAINSTREAM. The mandolin was nearly as heavy as the boy holding it. At a small-town Kentucky show, Ricky Skaggs stood before a crowd that knew him only as the local kid with steady hands. When the Father of Bluegrass beckoned him onto the stage, the weight of the instrument didn’t matter. Skaggs stood beside Monroe and played “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?” with the quiet, inherited authority of a mountain child who had learned the notes before he could write his own name. It was a fleeting, high-stakes initiation that bound the veteran master and the novice, tethering the future of a genre to the reach of a child’s fingers. Decades later, Nashville had shifted toward a polished, electronic sheen that seemed to leave the hollow-body resonance of the hills behind. Yet, when Skaggs rose to prominence in the early 1980s, he didn’t strip away the sound of his youth. Instead, he forced radio to listen to the sharp, woody snap of his mandolin and the high, lonesome ache of brother-style harmonies. He moved the needle not by chasing the trend, but by dragging the past directly into the spotlight, proving that a fiddle and a steady rhythm were still enough to conquer the charts. When the end finally arrived for the old man in 1996, the circle closed in the quiet dignity of a funeral procession. Ricky Skaggs, the once-young boy who had once trembled while holding the patriarch’s instrument, walked beside the casket as an honorary pallbearer. The mandolin had been returned to the silence, but the weight of the music remained in the hands of the boy who had grown up to keep it alive.

Oldies Musics

Elvis Presley did not always need a microphone to command attention. People who encountered him often described something harder to explain than his voice or appearance: the atmosphere seemed to change when he entered a room. Fame certainly played a part, but photographs cannot explain why so many people remembered his presence years after meeting him.