“Perhaps Love” — John Denver and Placido Domingo

Hearing Andrea Bocelli on the radio the other day, I was reminded of his somewhat incongruous appearance on the Britain’s Got Talent Final a year or two ago.

Amongst the performing dogs, a dance group dressed as gladiators for no apparent reason, a Welsh choir and a whole panoply of acts straddling the spectrum from bizarre to brilliant…classical music superstar Andrea Bocelli definitely brought a touch of class to the proceedings, even if it wasn’t at all clear why his agent booked him that gig.

Or indeed why the talent booker on Britain’s Got Talent thought what the final needed more than anything else was a performance by a classical music superstar.

I can only assume it paid well.

But every time I think of Andrea Bocelli in those slightly incongruous circumstances, in almost the same breath I think of another classical music superstar who paired up with a very different artist to record one of the most tender love songs of all time.

That time it was Placido Domingo playing the role of classical music superstar. And he probably got a better break than Andrea Bocelli on the people he chose to work with when he recorded “Perhaps Love” with John Denver.

Back in the day, I was a big John Denver fan. He wrote some beautiful songs with delightful lyrics, including “Annie’s Song”. This has just about the most heart-warming expression of love for another person ever committed to a song lyric…who wouldn’t be flattered to have this lyric written about them and sung for them?

You fill up my senses
Like a night in the forest
Like a mountain in springtime
Like a flower in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses
Come fill me again

I didn’t even need to double-check the lyrics on this one, as I usually do in the interests of journalistic integrity — I’ve been able to recite these lyrics from memory since about 1975.

“Annie’s Song” was the first song I learned to play off by heart on the piano. I felt the song nicely described how I felt about someone and I hoped she might magically realise the feelings I had for her every time I played the song within her hearing.

Sadly, my romantic interest was studiously ignored…and who could blame her…but on the plus side it did mean I practised this song so often as a teenager I can still remember every word of…