Song · Mary Hopkin
“Those Were the Days” by Mary Hopkin
From the album Those Were the Days (2005)
“Those Were the Days” by Mary Hopkin appears on 2 radio countdowns from 1 station between 2009 and 2020. It was first released in 2005 on the album Those Were the Days. Its best result is #366 on the WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #5,022 indie & aaa song of all time.
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Video from YouTube (Mary Hopkin - Topic). Pressing play loads YouTube's player. Watch on YouTube
"Those Were the Days" was Mary Hopkin's debut single in 1968, and here it anchors a 2005 collection named after it. The Welsh singer's recording came out on Apple with Paul McCartney of the Beatles producing and Richard Hewson arranging, and it went on to top the charts in the UK and Canada, stalling at number two in the US only because "Hey Jude" was in the way.
The song itself sets Gene Raskin's words to "Dorogoi Dlinnoyu", a Russian romance by Boris Fomin, and it looks back on youth from a distance: nights spent with a friend in a tavern, glasses up, voices raised, feet moving, and the golden future they pictured that never quite showed up. Hopkin's voice gives that ache a clear-eyed innocence. It later landed on her 1969 debut album, Post Card.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 366 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
| 2020 | 993 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
Also listed as: Those Were The Days.
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