Daisy Daisy
The Victorian bicycle song that became one of history's most famous love songs
Listen
Arrangement: Ian J. Watts / Mike Wilbury · Singalongasong Band / ClassicRocks
Lyrics
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.
I'm half crazy all for the love of you.
It won't be a stylish marriage,
I can't afford a carriage.
But you'll look sweet,
Upon the seat,
Of a bicycle made for two.
Harry, Harry, here is your answer true.
I'm not crazy all for the love of you.
There won't be any marriage,
If you can't afford a carriage.
'Cause I'll be switched,
If I get hitched,
To a bicycle made for two.
Traditional lyrics — public domain. Arrangement © Singalongasong Band / ClassicRocks.
History & Background
History & Origin
"Daisy Bell" — better known by its refrain, "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do" — was written in 1892 by the English songwriter Harry Dacre. The bicycle made for two in the song is a tandem bicycle — a craze that swept Victorian Britain and America in the 1890s as cycling became the fashionable pursuit of the middle classes. The image of a couple pedalling together on a tandem captured the romantic and slightly daring spirit of the "new woman" era.
Dacre is said to have been inspired to write the song after he was charged import duty on his own bicycle when he arrived in America. A friend joked that he was lucky he hadn't brought a bicycle made for two, as he would have had to pay double the duty. The joke gave Dacre his song.
The song was an immediate hit on both sides of the Atlantic, performed in music halls and parlours throughout the 1890s. The answer-verse, in which Daisy explains she won't marry without a proper carriage, was added in various versions to give the song a comic second act.
The song's most extraordinary afterlife came in 1961, when an IBM 7094 computer at Bell Labs became the first computer ever to sing. The song it sang — chosen by the engineers — was "Daisy Bell." Stanley Kubrick later used this moment as the inspiration for the scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey" where the dying computer HAL 9000 sings the same song, one of cinema's most unsettling moments.
