Here's a little seasonal depression / New Years-related music for you. Somehow I totally missed this, but the great songwriter Dan Fogelberg died a couple weeks back of prostate cancer. My father is a big fan of Fogelberg's work, so I first heard his music when I was very young. He is best known for the classic "Same Old Lang Syne," which it turns out was about 99% a true story. It's a song about two former lovers who meet in a grocery store and remember what they loved about one another, basically. It's an incredibly powerful song, partly because of its melody, which is based on Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.
Here are a couple good versions of it I yanked from YouTube. This first one is a fairly recent solo performance. He takes some liberties with the melody in the chorus that I can't say I love in this one, but it has the advantage of being played on a real piano.
The second one is older, from 1991. It's a little truer to the album version, but is played on a cheesy electric piano that I can't say I'm a big fan of.
