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Released in 1998

A Room With A View

Written by Noël Coward

Last updated on July 27, 2014


Album This song officially appears on the Twentieth-Century Blues: The Songs of Noel Coward Official album.

Timeline This song was officially released in 1998

Related session

This song was recorded during the following studio sessions:

“A Room With A View” is a song from Noël Coward, recorded by Paul McCartney as part of a tribute album released in 1998. While the credits mention “Mellow T.Ron and his Mood Men Featuring Stick Willie Guitar“, the song has been recorded by Paul alone, and engineered by “Eduardo Pequeño” aka Eddie Klein.

SongFacts describes the original song as:

This jaunty, uptempo love song has long become a standard. Noël Coward borrowed the title from the 1908 novel by E.M. Forster, whose love story is regarded as a critique of Edwardian society. In 1927, Coward suffered a nervous breakdown and burn out after his play This Was A Man which had been banned in England, flopped in the United States. He had been working flat out since 1924 when The Vortex, which he wrote and starred in, took the theatrical world by storm. He booked a ticket to Hong Kong but stopped off in Hawaii for several weeks where he stayed with the Dillingham family to recuperate. The song came into his head one day as he lay dozing in the sun. It went into the revue This Year Of Grace the following year.

The sheet music was published by Chappell of London. An early recording was made by Billy Elliot on the Edison Bell Winner label; seventy years later it was recorded by no less an artist than Paul McCartney for a Coward tribute album.

This tribute album was entitled Twentieth-Century Blues: The Songs of Noël Coward, and profits from the album sale were donated to the Red Hot AIDS Charitable Trust.


Lyrics

A room with a view and you

And no one to worry us,

No one to hurry us through this dream we've found.


We'll gaze at the sky and try

To guess what it's all about,

Then we we will figure out why the world is round.


We'll be as happy and contented as birds upon a tree,

High above the mountains and sea.


We'll build and we'll coo -oo-oo-

And sorrow will never come,

Oh, will it ever come true, a room room with a view.


We'll build and we'll coo -oo-oo-

And sorrow will never come,

Oh, will it ever come true, a room room with a view.

Oo-oo, a room with a view.

Officially appears on

Bootlegs

Live performances

Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert.


Going further

Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas. The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol. 2) 1990-2012

This new book by Luca Perasi traces Paul McCartney's post-Beatles output from 1990 to 2012 in the form of 250 song entries, filled with details about the recordings, stories behind the sessions and musical analysis. His pop albums, his forays into classical and avant-garde music, his penchant for covering old standards: a complete book to discover how these languages cross-pollinate and influence each other.

The second volume in a series that has established itself as a unique guide to take the reader on a journey into the astonishing creativity of Paul McCartney.

Read our exclusive interview with Luca Perasi

Buy on Amazon

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