‘Those Were The Days’ Welsh singer Mary Hopkin to release album of duets with daughter

Hopkin, best known for her number 1 UK hit ‘Those Were The Days’, also competed in the 1970 Eurovision Song Competition and came 2nd with ‘Knock, Knock, Who’s There’. 

She lost out to Ireland’s 32 votes to Dana’s ‘All Kinds Of Everything’. Further hits included ‘Knock Knock Who’s There’, ‘Goodbye’, and ‘Think About Your Children’. 

Mary was also one of the first artists to be signed to The Beatles label Apple Records, after appearing on television programme ‘Opportunity Knocks’ in 1968. 

Her debut single, “Those Were the Days”, was produced by Paul McCartney, was released in the UK on 30 August 1968. It became a number 1 hit on the UK Singles Chart and It reached number 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, where for three weeks it was held out of the top spot by the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and spent two weeks at number 1 on Canada’s RPM singles chart. 

It sold over 1,500,000 copies in the United States alone, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA. Global sales topped 8,000,000.

The new album, ‘Two Hearts’, will be released on May 3rd, Mary’s birthday. 

Having sung together at home and on each other’s albums, they finally committed to an album of their favourite covers and some new jointly-written and performed songs.

Mary and Jessica learned some covers together back when Jessica got her first guitar as a teenager. 

These included ‘Eternal Flame’ by The Bangles, ‘My Town’ by the McGarrigles, and ‘Why Worry’ by Dire Straits. They sang the latter together on stage when Mary appeared with The Chieftains in 1999.

They moved on to writing together and Jessica included some of these songs in live shows and on her albums, such as ‘Here It All Comes Again’ and ‘The Less Said The Better’.

Other songs were written more recently, Mary writing lyrics and melodies to Jessica’s instrumentals, resulting in stunning multi-layered harmonies on tracks such as ‘Far Away’ and ‘Two Hearts, Broken’.

Mary and Jessica play most of the instruments between them. 

Morgan Visconti – Mary’s son and Jessica’s brother – has supplied guitar solos on three of the tracks.

Christian Thomas also plays bass and additional guitar on the record.

Previous releases on Mary Hopkin Music feature artwork by Mary, but this time Mary gave Jessica free rein with her paints.

The CD is presented in a cardboard gatefold sleeve with an 8-page illustrated lyric booklet.

You can pre-order ‘Two Hearts’ on CD at maryhopkin.com/albums/two-hearts.

(Lead image: Mary Hopkin)