Don McLean - 'Starry Starry Night' (with lyrics)
"Vincent" is a song by Don McLean written as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh.
It is also known by its opening line, "Starry Starry Night", a reference to Van Gogh's 1889 painting ‘The Starry Night’. The song also describes other paintings by the artist.
McLean wrote the lyrics in 1971 after reading a book about the life of van Gogh. The following year, the song became the No. 1 hit in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks and No. 12 in the US.
In the US, "Vincent" also hit No. 2 on the Easy Listening chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 94 song for 1972.
The song was aparticular favorite of the late rapper and actor Tupac Shakur and was played to him in the hospital just before he died.
Don McLean said the following about the genesis of the song:
"In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms. I was sitting on the veranda one morning, reading a biography of Van Gogh, and suddenly I knew I had to write a song arguing that he wasn't crazy. He had an illness and so did his brother Theo. This makes it different, in my mind, to the garden variety of 'crazy' – because he was rejected by a woman [as was commonly thought].
So I sat down with a print of Starry Night and wrote the lyrics out on a paper bag.
https://youtu.be/OtLwXsjIj3E