Dusty Springfield - The Windmills of Your Mind [HD]

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Dusty Springfield sings 'The Windmills of Your Mind' from her 1969 Atlantic album 'Dusty in Memphis', considered her best and on many greatest albums lists. The song's music is by Michel Legrand and English lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The lyrics are below with comments on the song and album.

Note: This song sung by Noel Harrison in the 1968 United Artists film The Thomas Crown Affair starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway won the Academy Award for Best Original Song that year. This video shows scenes from the film.

[Vinyl/19-Images/WAV]

The Windmills of Your Mind (Singer: Dusty Springfield)

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel

Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone

Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that you said?

Lovers walk along the shore
And leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand?

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong?

When you knew that it was over
You were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of his hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel

As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Songwriters: Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Michel Legrand
[Lyrics from azlyrics.com]

Wikipedia states:

"The Windmills of Your Mind" is a song with music by French composer Michel Legrand and English lyrics written by Americans Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The French lyrics, under the title "Les Moulins de mon cœur", were written by Eddy Marnay.

The song (with the English lyrics) was introduced in the film The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. In 2004, "Windmills of Your Mind" was ranked 57 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top songs in American cinema. A cover by Sting was used in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.

The Thomas Crown Affair is a 1968 American neo-noir heist film directed and produced by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning Best Original Song for Michel Legrand's "The Windmills of Your Mind". A remake was released in 1999, and a second remake was in development stages as of 2016.

Jerry Wexler, president of Atlantic Records, heard "The Windmills of Your Mind" on the soundtrack of The Thomas Crown Affair and championed having Dusty Springfield record the song for her debut Atlantic album Dusty in Memphis, overcoming the singer's strong resistance; Springfield's friend and subsequent manager Vicki Wickham would allege: "Dusty always said she hated it because she couldn't identify with the words." During the first sessions for the track at American Sound Studio in Memphis, problems with getting the proper chords down arose, and at Springfield's suggestion the song was arranged so the first three verses were sung in a slower tempo than the original film version.

Dusty in Memphis is the fifth studio album by English singer Dusty Springfield. It was recorded at American Sound Studio in Memphis and released on 18 January 1969 by Atlantic Records. To make the album, Springfield worked with a team of musicians and producers that included Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin, Tom Dowd, conductor Gene Orloff, backing vocalists The Sweet Inspirations, bassist Tommy Cogbill, and guitarist Reggie Young.

Dusty in Memphis sold poorly on its first release, despite featuring one of Springfield's top-10 UK hits, "Son of a Preacher Man". The album has since been acclaimed as her best work and one of the greatest records of all time; music critic Robert Christgau has called it "the all-time rock-era torch record" and included it in his "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). In 2001, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.