To One In Paradise

Album: Tales Of Mystery And Imagination (1976)
Charted: 108
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Songfacts®:

  • "To One In Paradise" is the closing track on The Alan Parsons Project's debut, a concept album inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe titled Tales of Mystery and Imagination. It's based on Poe's poem of the same title.

    The song's lyrics are different from the poem's words but the theme remains the same: "To One In Paradise" is about mourning a lost love or friend. The "one in paradise" is the deceased.
  • Scottish keyboardist Billy Lyall, who'd been in Pilot and co-wrote their signature hit, "Magic," played Fender Rhodes electric piano and glockenspiel on this recording. He played common instruments on a few other tracks as well, but this is the only one where he made those two unusual contributions.
  • The song uses a mix of vocalists.

    The first verse is sung by Terry Sylvester, rhythm guitarist for The Hollies. Sylvester sang the high parts of Hollies songs after Graham Nash left to join David Crosby and Stephen Stills in 1968. Sylvester also did backing vocals behind John Miles on "The Cask Of Amontillado" on Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The Hollies used Alan Parsons as sound engineer on five of their albums.

    The second verse is sung by Sylvester with Eric Woolfson, who co-founded The Alan Parsons Project and co-wrote every song on the album.

    The chorus is from Sylvester and Jane Powell, who starred in several Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals throughout the 1940s and '50s. Powell was known primarily as an actress, but she did have a popular rendition of "True Love" that was out at the same time as the Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly version that is remembered today.

    Woolfson and Alan Parsons did the third verse.
  • "To One In Paradise" was the third and final single released off Tales of Mystery and Imagination. At #108, it was also the lowest-charting of the three "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" hit #37 and "The Raven" hit #80.

Comments: 1

  • Musicolorista from BoliviaLet me get a correction in. There's only two verses in the song. The first is sung by Terry Sylvester and the second is a tandem between Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons (in order of appearance) who are eventually joined by Terry on the last section of the verse.
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