Brown Eyed Girl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Brown Eyed Girl" is a hit song written and recorded in 1967 by singer-songwriter, Van Morrison and produced by Bang Records chief Bert Berns. The song was first released on the album Blowin' Your Mind! as Morrison's first single as a solo artist and became his biggest hit. The song's nostalgic lyrics about a former love were considered too suggestive at the time to be played on many radio stations. A radio-edit of the song was released which excised the lyrics "making love in the green grass," replacing them with "laughin' and a-runnin'" from a previous verse. This edited version appears on some copies of the compilation album The Best of Van Morrison. However the remastered CD seems to have the bowdlerized lyrics in the packaging but the original "racy" lyrics on the disc.

The song was originally titled "Brown-Skinned Girl" but Morrison later changed it to "Brown Eyed Girl" because he felt it sounded better.[1]

In November 2004, "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison was listed at #109 on the Rolling Stone Magazine list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. [2]

In January 2007, "Brown Eyed Girl" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Morrison's original recording of "Brown Eyed Girl" remains widely familiar today, as it seems to be firmly ensconced in the playlists of most "oldies" and "classic rock" radio stations (these days usually in the uncensored version).

At the televised memorial for Laci Peterson, Morrison's original version of "Brown Eyed Girl" was played as the closing music.

In April 2005, the White House announced that "Brown Eyed Girl" gets regular rotation on George W. Bush's iPod. Morrison announced before a university performance in England: "Yeah, it's good to hear things like that, you know. But I would have preferred if it was a new song."[3]

After many years of not performing "Brown Eyed Girl" in concert, in 2006 and 2007, Morrison added it most of his concerts along with "Gloria" as a closer or encore.

"Brown Eyed Girl" was part of the soundtrack for the 1989 movie, Born on the Fourth of July, and as such was one of the nineteen songs featured on Van Morrison's 2007 compilation album, Van Morrison at the Movies - Soundtrack Hits.