Jacks rewrote the lyrics to be from the perspective of a dying man saying good bye to his loved ones.

Wowser

We had joy, we had fun, we went streaking in the sun
But the cops drew their guns, and they shot us in the buns

Nirvana's cover of this is hauntingly beautiful

One of the strangest #1 songs ever.

My God. We grew up in the Midwest singing that.

It my elementary school it was something like (I don't remember exactly, it was the 70s):

 We had Joy, she was fun, as we did her up the bum
 But the thrill wasn't long, 'cause we did it very wrong

So there I was in a brothel in tangiers, and Motley Crue was refusing to go on stage unless we could find a little person with one eye...

but that is a story for another time...

I thought it was about a fuckin' dog dying.

We had joy we had fun picking bogies in the sun but the sun got too hot so it all turned into snot.

Uk version.

I actully like that song, i remember when it came out 1973/74

All your weed is broooown (weed is brown), and your dealer’s gay (and your dealer’s gaaaaaAAAY!).

Written by Jaques Brel, a great singer songwriter of North African origin who was brought up in Scharbeek Brussels. He rose to fame in Paris with the great artists of the day.

He wrote a lot of songs, many of these were used by other artists with great success.

A bloke I know (a big cheese in the music biz) reckons about ten percent of his favourite modern songs either came directly from, or were heavily influenced by this great man.

To see Brel at his best seek out a video of him singing 'Amsterdam' live in Bruges. It's in (heavily accented) French but you don't need to speak the language to get it.

This is one of those songs where I heard a cover version first and instantly recognise it, but consider the original to be lacking in comparison. Does anyone else experience this?

I always assumed it was a song about an old drunk dying. "It was fun, but then I poisoned my liver" kind of thing.

I think we need to talk about the B-side, "Put The Bone In"... wow, what a title. XD

And an absolutely awful song.

I was only about 7 or so when I was often playing the 45 RPM of "Seasons in the Sun". I think I probably listened to the B-side twice and even as a young child I was thinking "what a piece of shit that is".

Seriously, was he thinking it was a comedy, tragedy, beer hall song? And to think he probably has other songs that "werent good enough" for the B-side.

That's the B-Side, actually (Side B, "Put the Bone In," is actually about a dead dog, and not the audio porn you might assume from the title).

As far as song about dead dogs go, I'd say it's probably one of the best.

Oh my gosh, that clip was a lot of fun. Thank you for posting!

That's a deep WW2 reference