"Greensleeves"
What could be more English than "Greensleeves"? Nobody knows who wrote it but almost certainly it was not King Henry VIII who was too busy fighting the Catholic church, chasing women and eating chicken drumsticks to compose beautiful music and charming lyrics. Besides there's a certain tenderness in the song that we most certainly would not associate with boorish Henry the Eighth. The song was first officially registered with The London Stationers' Company in September 1580 but its history is most likely much longer than that. Today there are a lot of versions of "Greensleeves" out there. Often they are instrumental versions with the lyrics oddly overlooked. Other versions are classical, performed by po-faced trained singers. I wanted to share a version in which the singing would be foremost and the performers would appear to feel the meaning of the old words they were singing. I chose this version by Peter Hollens and Tim Foust, filmed standing on a...