Aled Jones – Walking in the Air
2016
31K Likes
Best comments
1.“Bro's so fire, he had to feature himself.”
More comments
- 2.“Peter Auty was a choirboy at St Paul's Cathedral who, at 13, sang 'Walking in the Air' for the 1982 film The Snowman – but in the rush to finish, his name was left off the credits. In 1985 the composer re-recorded it for a Toys 'R' Us commercial, chose Aled Jones instead, and it became a hit single. Many people assumed Jones was the singer in the film.”
- 3.“At one point in my life I reached rock bottom. My personal and professional life were blown away right in front of me. I lost everything. Things got better... a lot better, and this song was part of my recovery. It might seem silly, but it brought me peace and comfort.”
The story
In 1985 a Welsh choirboy named Aled Jones went into Abbey Road and recorded Walking in the Air, Howard Blake's song from the animated film The Snowman. The boy who sang it in the 1982 film, Peter Auty, had already lost his treble voice, so Blake called Aled instead. The single became a UK chart hit and made him famous around the world. Then his voice broke. Spitting Image joked that it took about ten minutes.
Thirty-one years later Blake wrote a new arrangement for treble, tenor and strings, so the grown-up Aled could sing a fresh tenor line right alongside his own 1985 recording. They tracked it in August 2016, and it opened his album One Voice at Christmas that November, which went to number one on the UK classical chart and stayed there through Christmas.
This Classic FM session is that duet: the man singing with the boy he used to be. Aled admitted it felt very weird at first and turned joyous within a few bars. Hard to say which voice gets you more.
