From Northern Exposure: A Song
One night a million years ago I’m watching Northern Exposure and there’s a scene with something about Shelly’s pageant and there’s a song in the background, something odd and the people singing have accents maybe and there’s a drifting twirling while they show the pageant women spinning in their gowns.
I wanted that song.
I didn’t know how to find it — this was before google — and all I could remember is that it says “pretty” in it. Pretty girls? Pretty something? I remembered the swirling skirts, slow motion and the word pretty — a delicate cacophony of skirts and singing but I had no idea how to find it.
I’ve looked for that song since that show aired in 1991.
I recently realized I could get the series on DVD from the library and comb through them to find the song but c’mon — that’s a lot of television to scan through and I’m a busy person. So I started hunting episode lists trying to find the one I needed figuring I could just get that year and do a lot of fast forwarding ’til I came to a pageant scene. And my friends, I have found it.
It took me awhile because I remembered the scene as if Shelly was watching but I figured out it was actually Maurice watching the pageant in the episode The Big Kiss. And once I figured that out, I found the song. And it’s by Sondheim and I already own it and I love it and I play it all the time and now I can play it in a new context.
Here you go: Pretty Lady mp3 from Pacific Overtures
(Hey, was Northern Exposure the first television show to really utilize their soundtrack? Does Grey’s Anatomy owe them a debt or what?)
I miss that show - and thank you for the tip on this song, which led to the show it’s from. Anything by Sondheim works for me.
Margie, I really love Pacific Overtures. I go back and forth but I think it’s my favorite of his shows with Sweeney a close second. (Very close!)
mmmmm, this song gets better the second time ’round. at first i thought it was hard to quite grasp onto, it was so odd, but then the “delicate cacaphony” started being quite beautiful indeed — sort of like in a strange dream. i can almost hear the skirts twirling delicately in and about and around!
very pretty, — wonderfully odd and pretty
— thanks for sharing!
How much do I love you?! I always wanted the song from the final episode and have now found it! (Our Town - Iris Dement)
Wendy! Quick! You can get it here: p://www.settingthewoodsonfire.com/2008/03/caitlin-rose-interview-and-mix-tape.html
Hey, are our kids around the same age difference? (Mine are 4 & 11) Yours are darn cute!!
Aw. I loved that show. Miss that show. Miss where I was in my life then — sometimes. Glad you found the song, even if it did take, like 17 years. Once I tried to remember the name of a guy I worked with at the library when I was 16 years old. Two years went by and one day I randomly blurted, “Chris Gallagher!!” I’ve not forgotten his name since. Somehow your post made me remember that, too. Thanks.
It’s so elegant!
I actually watched this episode last night and was so thrilled when I heard the song and realized it was the one from your post! While my partner watched Northern Exposure back when it was airing but I didn’t have a tv then, so I’m working my way through the dvds from the library.
It was oddly comforting to get to this song last night and feel like bits of the adoption blogosphere were watching with me.
Thorn, was the scene like how I remembered it? I’m still waiting to get the DVD from the library! Also I added your blog to my feed reader so thanks for commenting!
Everyone owes something to NX these days. But getting the DVDs doesn’t always help you with the music, because the musicians and their corporate owners refused to sell the music for whatever it was that Universal Studios offered (probably not enough, let’s grant that) and so they replaced big chunks of the music with generic orchestrations.
[Not to get all NX loving, but in another life, I have one of the few NX sites still being updated, if by "once every year or two" we can say "update." Oh I miss that show. Except that, in my universe, it ended with Joel someplace up north still, and not with all the weird magical-realism stuff, and definitely NO Maggie-Chris. Because -- NO.]
It’s a lot like you remember it, the implication being that there’s a competition on to find the most beautiful woman in town and we just see bell-like skirts, twirling bodies, and then eventually Shelly and it’s clear that it’s Maurice who’s raptly watching her. Now that I write this, it’s interesting that it works that way because it’s his fantasy and yet he appears in the third person there. I guess that’s how most of their dream sequences work, but I hadn’t noticed before.
It was a good episode! I’m liking Season 2 better than Season 1, and I think the music’s gotten more layered and interesting too.
(And thanks for adding me. I’ve been a reader for ages but don’t comment much.)