We have been having a lot of fun with our current unit of learning in music. We have been looking at the song ‘You To Me Are Everything’ by The Real Thing. We explored the genre of music and even practised some disco dance moves from the 70s. So that we knew a little more about the band and their music, we discussed information and researched answers to help us to understand their story a little more. We then looked at the song in more detail, discussing the meaning behind it. We found out that the song was released in Summer 1976, and that year was particularly memorable to those that experienced it because it was a very hot summer and therefore this song became a soundtrack to the glorious weather. We ended the lesson by getting to know the lyrics and melody more by learning the words and trying to sing it at the right pitch with the correct notes. As an added challenge, we then added in some of the 70s disco dance moves that we had practised earlier in the lesson.
The following lesson, we talked about cover songs and how different bands and artists can take a song that already exists and do their own version of it – a cover. Discussions were had around how covers can have similarities and differences to the original version. We listened to three covers of ‘You To Me Are Everything’ (by Sonia, Anthony Strong, and The Overtones) and talked about how there were elements of similarities but also very clear differences. Once we had listened to them all, we took a vote on which was our favourite cover – it was a draw between The Overtones and Anthony Strong. We then ended the lesson by looking at the first verse of another disco song ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang, before continuing to learn ‘You To Me Are Everything’.
