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The stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve usually sounds like this.
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This is "Auld Lang Syne", a song that represents the emotional conclusion to another year.
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But it might surprise you to know it's also a soccer anthem in the Netherlands.
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Or, in Japan, it's a traditional song about fireflies.
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And the original was written centuries ago as a Scottish celebration song.
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So, how did this song that's managed to spread across the world become the song we sing when the ball drops?
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What does this song mean?
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My whole life, I don't know what this song means.
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A lot of people share this confusion about "Auld Lang Syne" because the lyrics are sort of hard to figure out.
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Let's start with the title.
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"Auld Lang Syne"
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Individually, these words mean "old", "long, and "since", which, taken together, translate to something like "for old time's sake".
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It's written in Scots, a language spoken by about a million people in Scotland today.
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The rest of the lyrics are a mix of English and Scots words, like, "And there's a hand, my trusty feire... And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught".
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What is that?
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So, "feire" means friend.
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"Tak' a right gude-willie waught", so, a waught related to the word "draft," in English, would be a good pint of beer I imagine.
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This song asks you to remember people from your past and raise a toast to them, which made it a popular song to sing at New Year's and other celebrations.
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And that line about taking your friend's hand?
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That's related to a traditional dance British people still do today.
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The guy who popularized this song was one of Scotland's most famous exports: Robert Burns.
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Burns was a poet writing in the 1700's, just after Scotland and England unified to create the kingdom of Great Britain.
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He witnessed the decline of traditional Scottish culture in favor of English norms.
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So he devoted the end of his life to preserving this dying culture, by traveling the country to collect traditional poetry and songs to get them published.
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Auld Lang Syne was one of those songs.
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In a 1793 letter to his music publisher George Thomson, Burns claimed he wrote down the lyrics after hearing an old man singing it.
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He called Auld Lang Syne "an old song about the olden times."
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And he made sure Thomson kept the Scots words in the song, arguing "There is a naievete, a pastoral simplicity, in a slight intermixture of Scots words and phraseology."
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And this song, Auld Lang Syne, is doing a great job of tying in with the original idea of collecting folk songs, preserving heritage, celebrating heritage.
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Auld Lang Syne was republished in countless song books worldwide over the centuries and because of Burns, the Scots words are still in there.
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And even if you don't know the history behind them, you can still sort of figure out what the song is saying.
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Anyway, it's about old friends.
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Why has a song that people don't really understand become so widespread?
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For starters, the melody of Auld Lang Syne is simple, making it easy to sing along to and easy to adapt into other musical styles.
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Which is why it can become a soul song, or a bluegrass song, or rock 'n roll.
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And because it's uncomplicated and melodic, the song was easy to put with different lyrics.
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Like in the US in the Civil War era, it became a song about a wish for the war to end.
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And it was also a popular anti-slavery ballad.
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It took on new meanings in languages in other parts of the world, which is why it's in places you might not expect, like that soccer anthem in the Netherlands.
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Or a graduation song in parts of Asia.
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And it was South Korea's national anthem until 1948.
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No matter what the language or lyrics are, Auld Lang Syne's popularity also has something to do with its nostalgic feeling.
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The song itself is often used in the popular context in an even more overtly sad way.
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If you look at the words, it's quite nostalgic as a song and that's its attraction.
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Which is why it started showing up in countless classic movies, usually to mark an emotional scene.
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Like in this 1937 Shirley Temple movie, when her character consoles a dying soldier by singing Auld Lang Syne.
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And the director Frank Capra used it for sentimental moments in at least 3 of his films.
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But in the US, the song is best known for one thing:
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"Happy New Year."
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And for that, we can thank Mr. New Year's Eve himself, Guy Lombardo.
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In 1928, Lombardo and his orchestra, The Royal Canadians, started a popular New Year's Eve radio show, broadcast from the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.
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This meant that Americans all over the country tuned in from their home radios to listen to the same music on New Year's Eve.
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And at the stroke of midnight, Lombardo played their version of Auld Lang Syne.
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Lombardo continued that tradition for nearly 50 years and when Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve started on TV in 1973, he would play Auld Lang Syne at midnight too.
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And after Clark, Ryan Seacrest did the same.
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So now at midnight, right after the ball drops, this is what you hear.
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It's still Lombardo's version.
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And this is why, for many, the song is so singularly associated with the nostalgia of another year past.
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So when this new year rolls around, even if you don't know all the words, sing along anyway.
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You won't be alone.
