Have I Told You Lately (Van Morrison cover) 1/365

Happy New Year everyone. On January 1st I started a series of videos that I hope I'll go through with. The idea is to record and upload a song everyday and post something about it. I'm starting with covers but I'll do some original material also. Aside from the challenge part of it, I want to document all the songs I've learnt over the years. I've forgotten many but every once in a while I brush up on them or just remember the changes and lyrics out of the blue. Most of the times It's because I look it up again on the web, a book or an old demo I made of it.



Anyway, Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately" is a song that I think I first heard Rod Stewart do on his MTV UnPlugged and subsequent video/single. I first heard the original on the compilation cd The Best of Van Morrison which was my introduction to him as an artist really. I'd heard "Gloria" and "Brown-eyed Girl" but wasn't really aware of him. This was in the mid 90's.

I started including the song in my sets sometime around there, maybe '98/99. Don't think I ever played it much cause I never felt comfortable with the keys I chose to play it in. Remember once in Santo Domingo's Casa de Teatro even playing it on electric in Bb.

Now, if you know the song, then you're aware that it's a love song that can be taken as an almost prayer, a love for a woman, or love of god. And of course the song hints at that with lyrics such as
"There's a love that's divine and it's yours and it's mine like the sun/ and at the end of the day we should give thanks and praise to the one". So, the song can be seen as deeply religious, deeply spiritual.

No matter what brings you to it, it's a beautiful, peaceful meditation on the joy that fills a heart with love.



1/365 Van Morrison - Have I Told You Lately (originally appeared on the 1989 album Avalon Sunset)