‘The song is especially moving now’
As the Queen tells Britons ‘we will meet again’, Tristram Fane Saunders recalls Vera Lynn’s famous track
When the Queen ended her televised address on Sunday night by reassuring isolated viewers that “we will meet again”, it was a powerful reminder of the song, made famous by Dame Vera Lynn, that became a symbol of hope through another national crisis.
Now 103, Lynn says: “I think people enjoy it because it speaks to the feeling of separation and the hope of reunion. Those lyrics are especially poignant with the current situation in our country.”
We’ll Meet Again was written by the composer Ross Parker and musical theatre impresario Hughie Charles at the start of the Second World War and Lynn was the first to record it. She had been singing since the age of seven and had already released a couple of records, but in 1939 We’ll Meet Again brought her worldwide fame.
The widespread appeal of the song was bolstered by Lynn’s frequent radio appearances which is how she became known as the “Forces’ sweetheart”. In late 1941, more than 20 per cent of the British public tuned in to her Sunday night radio show Sincerely Yours, in which she would sing and read out letters from people separated by the war.
Her music became a way for parted lovers to feel they were still together, and We’ll Meet Again closed every episode. “Keep smiling through,/ Just like you always do,” her signature song told listeners.
“I tried to keep people’s spirits up with music and so did many other performers,” says Lynn. “We also spent time with our families and, of course, food was sometimes very scarce but we got through it because we knew we had to.”
Not everyone was admiring of Lynn’s efforts. Since the Thirties, a small but vocal campaign had been building against “radio crooners”.
In 1935, The Telegraph ran a report headed “Crooning harms children”, which quoted campaigners who believed this sentimental style of music had a “pernicious effect”. One doctor claimed that any parent who allowed their child to listen to crooning, “might just as well hang their walls with indelicate pictures [or] line their bookshelves with pornographic literature”.
By 1942, the debate was filling The
Telegraph’s letters page. “If our Armed Forces really like this sort of thing, it should be the duty of the BBC to hide the fact from the world,” wrote a reader from Bath. Rather than “spineless crooners” and “sentimental organists”, he thought they should listen to “something more virile”.
Another letter struck a more thoughtful note: “Petulant criticism of the Forces Programme is easy, [but] listening in the Forces is very different from listening at home.” These broadcasts were made for “communal listening” under difficult circumstances.
However, the BBC buckled under the pressure from a few loud voices. Sincerely Yours was cancelled (or as the broadcaster put it, “rested”) in the spring of 1942, after just 12 episodes. In July that year, the BBC announced a universal “crooner ban”, tasking its new Dance Music Policy Committee with keeping slush off the airwaves.
But Lynn’s popularity endured. We’ll Meet Again inspired a popular 1943 musical film of the same name, in which she played a fictional version of herself. In 1944, the BBC brought back Sincerely Yours, bowing to the tide of popular opinion.
We’ll Meet Again remains Lynn’s defining anthem, more so than The White Cliffs of Dover. Although hers is the best-known version, the song is universal and has been recorded many times.
It could easily have been the soundtrack to the end of the world. And not just in Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear farce Dr Strangelove – although it is – but in real life, too. During the Cold War, the song was taken up by the BBC’S Wartime Broadcasting Service; in the event of nuclear Armageddon, it would have been one of several popular hits played to comfort and reassure the bunker-dwelling survivors.
And its place in global pop culture is unshakeable: for the final episode of his talk-show The Colbert Report in 2014, US comedian Stephen Colbert managed to convince dozens of celebrities to join him in a rousing rendition. In the impressive skit, everyone from Barry Manilow to Kevin Spacey to Henry Kissinger to The Cookie Monster promises that the “blue skies” will “chase those dark clouds far away”.
But the bittersweet tune still carries a sense of personal sadness. One study based on more than 30,000 ceremonies revealed that We’ll Meet Again is the sixth most popular song played at funerals, just behind the hymn The Lord is My Shepherd.
Of course, the sense of the tragic is what makes the song so haunting. “I know we’ll meet again” is a promise no one can keep. Despite it all, with only the most imperfect, hesitant hope – “don’t know where, don’t know when” – Lynn keeps singing. The world and the record continue to spin.
In this age of post-production, it’s remarkable to think that it was recorded straight onto wax in a single take.
As Lynn told The Telegraph in 2014, “If the trumpeter cracked on the last note, you had to do it all over again. You had to make sure your take was perfect.”
It was, and still is.
‘It speaks to the feeling of separation and the hope of reunion’