Every year, there’s a holiday-time song that gets to me (even more than that Folgers commercial where the kid comes home to surprise his parents). It’s about life, loss, regret, and what happens when reality intrudes on your hopes and dreams.Basically, every time I hear it, I burst into tears and start questioning the choices I’ve made in my life, wondering if it’s too late to change my life before the snow and all of its magic turns to rain. Some of you likely feel the same way about the remarkably affecting “Same Auld Lang Syne,” a ballad by Dan Fogelberg about a cab driver who encounters an old girlfriend; they discuss how their lives have gone since they were young and had dreams of being something amazing, and discovered that each had made compromises when it came to their dreams. Depressing, but resonant, this feeling of regret and “should-have-been,” especially during the holiday season that’s notorious (if somewhat erroneously) for its highest rate of suicide. It’s so sentimental that it borders on cheesy, but it touches something so universal and does such a remarkable job of storytelling that the cheesiness is somehow forgivable. And now this year there’s another reason to be depressed about this song. Singer Dan Fogelberg died this Sunday after a long bout with prostate cancer. He was 56, an age when he should have just been beginning to wonder about regret. Instead, thanks to his song, we have an imprint of his pre-emptive regret, all too appropriate for a man who died too soon.
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posted December 18, 2007 at 6:50 am
I was saddened to read of his passing yesterday;he will be missed.
posted December 18, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I too always loved same old lang syne, same auld lang syne and think of the summers and winters of my life , a life unplanned for but with good intention.
I never thought he was a Cab Driver in the song.” She said she saw me in the record store and that I must be doing well. I said the audience was heavenly but the traveling was hell..” I always believed this was about him and something that occured in his life. It does not matter, I still Love the song and will sadly miss him for all the seasons of my life to come.
posted December 18, 2007 at 3:06 pm
The world has just lost a great talent. No matter the season,Dan was a man who had a great voice. So sorry to lose him at Christmas. R.I.P.
posted December 19, 2007 at 5:56 pm
I never thought the song’s narrator was a cab driver- I thought it was Dan Forelberg himself. That’s how the lady “saw” him in the record store (she’d seen Dan’s albums on display, and knew he was becoming a successful recording artist). The hellish travelling he refers to is the constant touring a successful singer must do.
I think you may be getting this song confused with Harry Chapin’s “Taxi.”
posted December 31, 2007 at 11:03 am
I agree with the above postings. Dan was referring to himself in the song, as a performer. I too, was sooo saddened to hear about his death. As a lover of his music, not only of Auld Lang Syne, but of course, “The Leader of the Band”, “Run for the Roses” and many others, he died way too soon. Now Graham Nash was just diagnosed with prostate cancer. We need to keep him in our prayers. We can’t afford to lose any more of these icons.
posted December 31, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Ummm I don’t know where you got the idea it was about a cab driver. It is about himself. “Says she saw me in the record stores and I must be doing well. I said the audience was heavenly, but the traveling was hell…” Just wanted to clear that up…
I’m a major Fogelberg fan and he will be sorely missed….
posted December 31, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Where to begin….Dan Fogelberg had one of those voices that you knew, at least for me, the minute you heard it..He was one of the greatest soft tempo singers and I really liked his music. I’m so sorry that he was taken so young in his life..but God had other plans for him…This song I used in a blog just because it’s New Years, and it was by him. It had no particular meaning other than it’s obvious use and a testament to one of the greatest singers…He’ll be missed greatly by those who cared, I’m one of them…
posted December 31, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I recently used this song in a blog elsewhere simply for it’s relationship to the present but also as a testament to Dan Fogelberg. He will be sorely missed by me. His music was known the minute it hit the airwaves just by the sound..It had a certain one that I loved. So many of his songs had great meaning..they all tell a story of some sort. This one had no particular meaning to me other than the tune. Quite catchy..for whatever meaning it had, thank you Dan..And may you be singing with the angels loud enough for me to catch a tinkle of a bell now and then………
posted November 11, 2008 at 1:07 pm
recall the Harry Chapin song of new years regrets etc, Auld Lang Syne?
Not Taxi or the return of Taxi?
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posted January 16, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Dan Fogelberg had a lot of memorable tunes, but Same Auld Lang Syne is an embarrassment in how similar it is to the (much more effective) Taxi by Harry Chapin. The similarities might have been unintentional, but they are to numerous to be coincidental. Someone in his circle should have stopped Dan upcon hearing this song, and talked him out of releasing it. To me, it is a stain on his legacy
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posted August 16, 2011 at 3:46 pm
John,
I’m not sure how Fogelberg could have plagiarized anybody. This song was about an actual experience he had. The old lover he mentions admitted it was she who he was referring to in the song after Dan’s death. Her name was Jill Anderson, now Jill Greulich. She was Dan’s girlfriend throughout high school up until they went their separate ways in college. She says everything in the song is true, except that she has green eyes instead of blue, and her husband at that time was not an architect. Dan told her he used poetic license about the eye color because blue was easier to rhyme to, and he had no idea what profession her husband worked in.