Honolulu City Lights Explained

Honolulu City Lights
Type:song
Artist:Keola Beamer and Kapono Beamer
Released:1978, re-released 1999
Genre:Hawaiian
Label:Paradise Productions
SLP 808

"Honolulu City Lights" is a song composed by Hawaiian singer/songwriter Keola Beamer (b. 1951) in the 1970s. The song opens an album by the same name, Honolulu City Lights, which became the all-time bestselling Hawaiian album.[1] It won several of the Hawaiian music industry's Na Hoku Hanohano Awards in 1979, among them that for Best Contemporary Hawaiian Album, and both song and album went on to become one of the most popular and most played works of contemporary Hawaiian music.

Honolulu City Lights
Cover:Honolulu City Lights.jpg
Caption:Cover of the Carpenters' single "Honolulu City Lights"
Type:single
Artist:Carpenters
Album:Lovelines
B-Side:I Just Fall in Love Again
Released:1986
Recorded:1978
Genre:Pop
Label:A&M
1940
Producer:Richard Carpenter
Prev Title:Little Altar Boy
Prev Year:1984
Next Title:Something in Your Eyes
Next Year:1987

It has also become a Christmas music standard and is played on heritage radio station KSSK on its Christmas Music format during the Holiday season from November to December along with a handful of other Hawaiian standards and/or artists. A month long Christmas event in December that takes place in downtown Honolulu is also called Honolulu City Lights which began in 1985, but adopted the name officially in 1987.

A contemporary remake of the song was recorded by Richard and Karen Carpenter in 1978, but was not released until 1986 on single, and 1989 on album.

The Beamer Brothers album was re-released in 1999 as "Honolulu City Lights – 20th Anniversary" but listed as "Honolulu City Lights – 20th Anniversary" in leading catalogs and remains in print as of 2009.

Carpenters' version

According to the official website, Richard and Karen were vacationing in Hawaii in 1977 when they heard Keola Beamer's "Honolulu City Lights". They liked it and wanted to record it, eventually recording it at the same session as "Slow Dance".

The recording was not commercially released until three years after Karen Carpenter's death. They finally released it in 1986, three years before it was released on the Lovelines album.

Personnel

Notes and References

  1. Weller . Don . 1995 . The State of Music in the 50th State . 2024-02-09 . Billboard . 31 . . 107 . 18.