Bringing Back David Downes Originals

This is pretty straightforward! I just want to know what original David Downes songs you would bring back (in a perfect world where we didn't have to worry about the legal stuff between the group and David).

Let me know if I missed anything or screwed up somewhere!

My choices were The Soft Goodbye (it'll always be a favorite that helped me out during the tough times after my Grams died), Awakening (The BEST Celtic Woman opener EVER, in my opinion), and Walking The Night/The World Falls Away (okay, so technically I cheated since it's 2 songs put together; shame on me, I know; anyhow, I wanna hear Walking The Night with Mairead taking Lisa L's part and Megan taking Chloe's part, and then Eabha taking Lisa K's part in The World Falls Away, with Megan continuing Chile's part and Mairead joining in with Lisa L's part)

So many good choices in that list! I went with Send Me A Songx The Soft Goodbye, and At The Ceili.

Not easy choices.

My initial reactions were Sing Out and The Soft Goodbye, both of which are probably in my all-time top 10.

But "Sing Out" (probably top 3 all-time for me) worked not just because it a really, REALLY fun song to listen to, but because it had really effective choir backing. That's not likely to be something they can replicate on tour these days and the their are other songs that are better choices for the current lineup. I think you'd have to roll out Lisa Kelly, Chloë, Alex, Meav, and a full choir at minimum to pull that off on tour and let's be honest, not even the full choir is a likely.

I went with The Soft Goodbye and picked Finale/Mo Ghile Mear and Walking The Night/The World Falls Away as the other two.

Personally, I'd prefer they keep Tara doing separate songs from Mairead Nesbitt. They have different styles and there are better choices for Tara and her style.

Regardless of the songs they end up choosing, I hope the use mostly new arrangements. Those Classic Celtic Woman arrangements were written mostly for 3-4 soprano singers with different strengths than the current lineup. I think all the fresh arrangements on Ancient Land were a resounding success for me (save for the horrendous, offensively bad mixing job on one of the Deluxe album tracks) and I hope they go in that direction with whatever songs they choose.

As much as I'd love to see some David originals, I doubt we'll get them (as we knew them at least). I seem to recall there being some lawsuit brought by David against CW Ltd for royalties owed. My guess is that's why even old favorites have been rearranged--not to mention the very different voices and violin playing that make up the CW sound nowadays.