A Song For the Melting Snow

As the week's temperatures rose in New York City, we celebrate with song: Susannah McCorkle's extraordinarily moving 1994 in-studio performance of what would become her signature song, Antônio Carlos Jobim's "The Waters of March" (Aguas de março). The song is ostensibly about the coming of spring, but also, as she points out, "about the rebirth of the human heart" (McCorkle suffered from depression, and was a cancer survivor). The show's host, Steve Sullivan, chokes up afterward; you might, too.

We asked McCorkle's biographer Linda Dahl about the significance of the song: "Susannah McCorkle fell in love with the enigmatic, haiku-like 'Waters' as a story as much as a song. In Jobim’s tropical homeland, the drenching season of rain ends with spring mud and new green life, but Susannah's research uncovered that the Portuguese lyrics also refer to death and violence in the old feudal system of Brazil, along with being a celebration of new life."

"It's the end of all strain..." Can the daffodils be far behind?