Song Lyric Sunday – 20 December 2020 – A wheel within a wheel

Jim Adams’ Song Lyric Sunday gives us the chance to share familiar, and sometimes not so familiar, songs. Jim has given us Circle /Polygon /Square /Triangle this week to be included in the title or lyrics.

If you fancy sharing one of your favourite songs you can find out how to participate, and also listen to all the great entries, here.

This week I didn’t have to go round in endless circles to find a song and I shall not even begin to tell you the joke about the missing parrot.  Instead, I’ll just get on with telling you that  I have chosen what I consider to be a captivating song from a film that first aired in 1968, starring Steve McQueen and German actress Astrid Heeren. The title song was performed by Noel Harrison who took the song to #8 in the UK Singles Chart. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1968.

A version by Sting was used in the 1999 remake of the film which, this time, starred Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. The trailer can be viewed here.

The song is Windmills of Your Mind and the film is The Thomas Crown Affair

Live performance from Orange, France 2012 Vocal: Sinne Eeg Piano: Jacob Christoffersen

A cover by Alison Moyet

Joe Hisaishi & New Japan Philharmonic World Dream Orchestra

And the glider sequence from the 1968 film

The flying sequence and Noel Harrison background music,” Windmills of Your Mind”, was the only part of the movie to receive an Oscar.

Windmills of Your Mind

Noel Harrison

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?
Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find 
In the windmills of your mind!

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Marilyn Bergman / Michel Legrand / Alan Bergman

Windmills of Your Mind lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, BMG Rights Management