Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Que Sera Sera


This video of the famous song [from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)] by Doris Day presents a stylized version, but we get some more details in this 8-minute clip from the movie, and it is far more moving. Here it is:

A blog post by my colleague, Prof. Arunan, took me on a joy ride of sorts into the world of this song which has some seriously great cover versions. Here's Pink Martini:

And, here's another, from Marcus Miller:

There's an interesting Indian angle here: the tune of this song was used in a Tamil movie in a song whose lyrics start with a similar storyline ("I asked my mother, "what will I be? will I be pretty? will I be rich""). However, (and as Arunan points out), the song proceeds to present an unambiguously optimistic view ("yes, dear, everything will be great"), which runs so completely against the iffy message ("que sera sera, the future is not ours to see...") packaged in a nice, rousing tune.

The last stop (for now) is the Telugu version [hat tip to Madras Musings] which features the legendary Bhanumathy singing the original lyrics in a strange fusion of ... well, I'll let you figure it out: