Sally Oldfield is one of my absolute favorites! She has a great voice, and she makes music that is a lot more interesting than just average pop. She has some definite roots in the english folk scene, which are most evident in her early works, starting with the album "Children of the Sun" by her and her younger brother Mike Oldfield as the duo "Sallyangie".
The duo was formed when they were both very young, the name constructed by Sally's first name and the title of the song "Angie" by Bert Jansch of the group Pentangle, and it was indeed Bert Jansch and John Renbourne who discovered the two, and introduced them to the label "Transatlantic" who produced "Children of the Sun", Sallyangie's first and only album, in 1968.
After the short time in Sallyangie, Sally lived a long period out of the spotlight. She contributed to some albums and was working on a solo release, but it was not until 1978, that her first solo album was ready. The album, called "Water Bearer", is my absolute personal favorite among her albums. It is the album having the strongest folk influence, and the most important and longest song, "Songs of the Quendi", is very much inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's magnificent work "The Lord of the Rings", and I see it almost as a true piece of elven music.
For the last decade and a bit more, Sally has been making her albums in Germany. The move from England to Germany also meant a shift in style towards more pop like songs, though her albums from this period keep a strong touch of her, and her album from 1996, "Secret Songs", is in many ways returning to her folk roots, melting the new with the traditional in a great, great album.
The album "Flaming Star" marks in many ways a new period too. She has again changed recording label, this time to the british new age label "New World Music", where also her brother Terry is releasing his albums at the moment. The Style is indeed quite new age too, and has actually come closer to her brother Terry's musical style. In my own taste, this shift is not a positive thing, I personally find "Flaming Star" a rather dull album, and I would rate all her earlier albums higher. Still, this is my opinion, and I wish for Sally, that this flirt with a new style will attract an even wider audience, also to her earlier works, an audience that perhaps would not otherwise have investigated her musical skills.
I am maintaining a discography of her works, you can find it here for download (zip) or view it as text or HTML (contains about 1.5MB of jpeg scannings of covers). If you have any contributions to the discography, I would appreciate a mail.
If you are looking for some of her lyrics, I have transcribed some of them
(I will try to make the list complete, so keep an eye on this page).
Some are transcribed by listening, others are taken from covers and lyrics
sheets, but common for them all is, that I have tried to write them as close
as possible to what is actually sung, meaning that repetitions are written
out, errors in lyrics on the covers are corrected, and so on. If you find any
errors that I have made, please let me know.
You can either view the entire lyrics file here
directly, or you can download a zipped text file.
If you are only interested in specific albums, here is the list (not
zipped):
Children Of The Sun
Water Bearer
Easy
Femme
Natasha
Jessica's collection of lyrics.
Hope you enjoy them!
Also, visit the Sally Oldfield forum
Other useful links:
www.sallyoldfield.com - Sally's own
official home page.
If you are looking for Sally Oldfield's albums or those of Mike Oldfield, Amazon is a good place to look. Some examples:
Morten Due Jørgensen is a participant in the Amazon Europe S.à r.l. Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk/Javari.co.uk/Amazon.de/Amazon.fr/Javari.fr/Amazon.it.
Last revised: 2010-11-27
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