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Fact #156441

When:

Short story:

A New South Wales by The Alarm peaks at No31 in the UK singles chart.

Full article:

Mike Peters (The Alarm) : New South Wales was a song written by Eddie (MacDonald, bassist, The Alarm) and he actually wrote the music for it while we were making the Declaration album, he wrote it on the piano in the studio. And we could never find a home for it, I always remember saying to him, when he'd written it and played it for me the first time, I though it was a brilliant song and a brilliant melody.

We didn't have any lyrics for it until Eye Of The Hurricane - I wrote some lyrics for it. We tried to record it for Hurricane but it didn't work out. We were working on it in the studio for Change and it just seemed naked with just the voice and the piano. Tony Visconti, the producer, he was American, but he had Welsh roots. He used to be married to Mary Hopkin, if you remember Mary Hopkin Those Were The Days My Friends. And he had actually made a Welsh language album with her in the 60s.

I remember phoning a friend, Gareth Morlais, at the BBC and saying, "I've got this song called A New South Wales, it's not working in the studio and I think it needs something, something mad like a male voice choir and some strings on it. How about we come up to you at the BBC studios and we'll play some songs from the new album and you'll get a radio show, and in return, you get the strings And the choir and we'll do it." He said, "That sounds like a bargain".

So he got on to the Morriston Orpheus Choir and that's how they got involved. I think it was probably Gareth that said to me, "Look Mike, if we do this, you've got to do it in Welsh". So I said, "If you translate it, I'll sing it". I don't speak Welsh proficiently, but I can do it enough to be able to sing what Gareth had translated. And that gave me the idea of doing the whole album in Welsh. So when we were doing the album we just did it in English, but when we were mixing it, we just mixed it without the vocals and I went into the next studio and sang all the lyrics in Welsh. It sort of became a bit of a thing in Wales.
(Source : not known)