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I must admit to being speechless on hearing this. I innocently went back to the Terry Jacks version of this song, to reassure myself that the truck driver's gear change in Westlife's version had been added in for that special boy-band signature. But what I discovered was much, much worse.

Not only is there a premature gear change after the second chorus, but towards the end of the song there are a further two in a row. They're so ill-advised that you can hear the nervousness in his wavering voice as he tries to resist each time. All it achieves, though, is the effect of everything going horribly out of tune. I'm not absolutely certain that the word "cacophonic" exists, but that's the most apt way to sum up this atrocity.

Listen!

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You might well be forgiven for assuming that this constitutes the "original" version of "Seasons In The Sun". However, in a reply to a reader on his website, the prolific Rod McKuen gives full details about the origins of this song, mentioning in the process that the royalties from the Terry Jacks version helped pay for a new roof on his house. I like to think that when he has visitors, he shows them round an enormous mansion, pointing out whose records funded all the various architectural features.

In fact "Seasons In The Sun" has been recorded by about a trillion artists, in French (as "Le Moribond") and English, and before Terry Jacks put his version out, he'd been trying to produce it for the Beach Boys. Out of curiosity I tracked down their demo version of the song, and although the arrangement is pretty much the same, it is even more laughable.