You have most certainly heard other music from the Proclaimers. One of their most famous pieces is “(I’m gonna be) 500 Miles”, which was the theme song for the 1993 film Benny & Joon. In Recognition, however, is one you may not have heard yet.
The Proclaimers have never had problems in letting their beliefs be known, and this piece follows along those same lines. The lyrics are obvious in their meaning. I like it. Screw subtlety, the world is already full of politicians.
This song defines itself, as all of The Proclaimers music does, with the use of parallel harmonies in the vocals. You can hear this kind of thing regularly…all over the place…but no one does it as well as these guys. It’s beutifully mixed, and does not follow a normal Melody + Third progression that everyone else does. This is more definable as dual, complimentary, harmonies. My guess is that this stems from the fact that these two are Scottish. Scotland’s music is well defined over centuries of multiple harmonies interlaced to produce wonderful total tunes. This is a manifestaion of that.
One tendancy of celtic music as a whole is to become too muddy, making it hard to hear what is exactly going on. This is NOT the case with this song, nor of anything The Proclaimers as a group have produced (Which, by the way, is alot of music).
In Recognition came out on the album “Life with You”.
Buy the whole album.
