The Last of the Melting Snow

Album: The Sleeper (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • A heartbroken Nick Hemming penned this song in London, on New Year's Eve 2006, about his girlfriend of nine years with whom he'd recently split up. The Leisure Society frontman recalled to The London Times April 22, 2009: "I came back to Burton-on-Trent to see her, thinking we'd get back together, but she was getting ready to tell me she had a new boyfriend. I went back to London to find everyone had gone away for Christmas. So I spent New Year's Eve sitting on the floor with a bottle of vodka, writing 'The Last of the Melting Snow.' I had only started writing songs a couple of years before, but I think that intense bit of suffering brought out my creative side."
  • This song was nominated for a 2009 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. When its nomination was announced, The Leisure Society were without a record deal, making Hemming, the first ever Novello nominee without a publishing contract.
  • Elbow frontman and BBC Radio 6 DJ Guy Garvey named this song as his favourite of 2008.
  • In the early 1990s Hemming was a member of the indie band She Talks To Angels together with film director Shane Meadows and actor Paddy Considine.

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