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Those Were the Days (song)

"Those Were the Days"
Mary Jopkin - Those Were the Days.jpg
Single by Mary Hopkin
B-side "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
Released
  • 26 August 1968 (US)
  • 30 August 1968 (UK)
Format 7" single
Recorded mid-July 1968
Genre Folk
Length 5:05
Label Apple
Writer(s)
Producer(s) Paul McCartney
Mary Hopkin singles chronology
"Those Were the Days"
(1968)
"Goodbye"
(1969)
"Those Were The Days"
Single by Sandie Shaw
B-side "Make It Go"
Released 1968
Genre Pop
Label Pye
Writer(s)
Sandie Shaw singles chronology
"Together"
(1968)
"Those Were the Days"
(1968)
"Monsieur Dupont"
(1969)

"Those Were the Days" is a song credited to Gene Raskin, who put a new English lyric to the Russian romance song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною", literally "By the long road"), composed by Boris Fomin (1900–1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevsky. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism.

Mary Hopkin's 1968 version of the song, produced by Paul McCartney, became a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart. The song also reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, behind McCartney's own band The Beatles' hit "Hey Jude".

Georgian singer Tamara Tsereteli (1900–1968) and Russian singer Alexander Vertinsky made what were probably the earliest recordings of the song, in 1925 and in 1926 respectively.

The song is featured in the 1953 British/French movie Innocents in Paris, in which it was sung with its original Russian lyrics by the Russian Tzigane chanteuse Ludmila Lopato. Mary Hopkin's 1968 recording of it with Gene Raskin's lyric was a chart-topping hit in much of the Northern Hemisphere. On most recordings of the song, Raskin is credited as the sole writer, even though he wrote only the later English lyric (which is not an English translation of the Russian lyric) and not the music.

Mary Hopkin's version was released as "Kanashiki Tenshi" (悲しき天使?, literally "Sad Angel") in Japan.


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