Dan Fogelberg – Same Old Lang Syne

She Had Green Eyes, Not Blue, But Never Corrected Him

Released in November 1980, “Same Old Lang Syne” climbed to number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1981 and spent eighteen weeks on the chart, reaching number eight on the Adult Contemporary chart. The song debuted at number 37 on December 27, positioned perfectly between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and became one of the defining soft-rock ballads of the era. But here’s what Dan Fogelberg’s record company hated: when the single peaked, there was no album for fans to rush out and buy. Fogelberg had an epiphany on New Year’s Eve while sequencing what he thought was a finished album, realizing it should be a double album with a complete song cycle. He spent another six months writing new material, which drove his label absolutely nuts but resulted in one of the decade’s most successful double albums.

The commercial success justified Fogelberg’s stubbornness. The Innocent Age finally emerged in August 1981, eight months after the single’s peak, and sold over two million copies. Three more singles followed, each cracking the US top twenty: “Hard to Say” hit number seven, “Leader of the Band” matched “Same Old Lang Syne” at number nine, and “Run for the Roses” reached number eighteen. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200, proving Fogelberg’s instinct about the song cycle concept was commercially sound even if it initially frustrated everyone involved. Radio stations began playing “Same Old Lang Syne” every December despite it being about Christmas Eve, transforming it into a holiday staple that appears on seasonal playlists alongside traditional carols.

The song began as a creative exercise to see if Fogelberg could write something interesting about an event as ordinary as running into an old friend at a market. On Christmas Eve 1975, while visiting his parents in Peoria, Illinois, Fogelberg was sent out to find whipping cream for Irish coffee. The only place open was the Convenient Food Mart at 1302 East Abington Street Hill, where he encountered Jill Anderson, his high school girlfriend from Woodruff High School’s class of 1969. She was there for eggnog. They bought a six-pack of beer and sat in her car talking for two hours, the engine probably running because it was freezing outside. The song took over a year to write, with Fogelberg transforming what he initially considered a joke into something emotionally resonant by focusing on the specific details and unspoken regrets hanging in that cold car.

Recording took place with co-producer Marty Lewis, featuring the legendary Michael Brecker on soprano saxophone. The melody borrowed from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, specifically the famous French horn part, giving the verses a dramatic grandeur that contrasted beautifully with the intimate storytelling. Brecker’s improvised saxophone outro wove around the melody of “Auld Lang Syne,” that traditional Scottish song sung on New Year’s Eve, which inspired the title’s clever wordplay. Fogelberg started the song at his piano, deliberately writing plodding lyrics that matched the mundane reality of the encounter: taking groceries to the checkout stand, food being totaled up and bagged, standing there lost. Those who knew him heard his sense of humor in those knowingly ordinary details, as if “Silent Night” noted the temperature was 42 degrees and a bit cloudy.

“Same Old Lang Syne” closed the first disc of The Innocent Age, a concept album describing life stages from cradle to grave. The placement was deliberate, with nostalgia anchoring the collection before the second disc moved toward the present. Critics praised the album’s ambitious scope, though some questioned whether Fogelberg’s soft-rock aesthetic could sustain a double album’s length. The song itself represented peak Fogelberg: tender piano accompaniment, confessional lyrics, and that distinctive voice capturing middle-class melancholy with precision. In 2008, the City of Peoria gave Abington Street Hill the honorary designation of Fogelberg Parkway, immortalizing the location where the encounter happened and where countless fans now make pilgrimages.

The song’s legacy grew beyond its initial chart run. Train covered it for the 2017 tribute album A Tribute to Dan Fogelberg, while the Backstreet Boys recorded it for their October 2022 holiday collection A Very Backstreet Christmas, omitting the final verse and ending with the traditional “Auld Lang Syne” chorus instead. In 2006, a young fan named Grace Ferguson wrote Fogelberg asking about the final lyric: And as I turned to make my way back home, the snow turned into rain. Many interpreted it metaphorically as the world feeling warmer after reconnecting with his ex. Fogelberg acknowledged this reading as wonderful but clarified that as he drove home, the snow actually did turn into rain, proving sometimes the best metaphors are just honest observations.

After Fogelberg’s death from prostate cancer in 2007, Jill Anderson Greulich finally came forward with her story. She explained to the Peoria Journal Star that she’d kept quiet for years, worried that revealing herself would disrupt Fogelberg’s marriage, while he’d also refused to identify her. Looking at the lyrics, she noted two inaccuracies: her eyes were green, not blue, and her husband was a physical education teacher, not an architect, though Fogelberg likely never knew his profession. Regarding the devastating line about wanting to say she loved her husband but not liking to lie, Jill wouldn’t elaborate except to note she’d divorced him by the time the song was released. Sometimes the most painful truths arrive disguised as soft-rock ballads that play every Christmas, reminding everyone of the roads not taken and the people we touched on the sleeve in frozen food aisles.