A Whiter Shade of Pale Lyrics

[Chorus]
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

[Bridge 2]

[Additional Verse]
She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,'
Though in truth we were at sea

So I took her by the looking glass
And forced her to agree
Saying, 'You must be the mermaid
Who took Neptune for a ride.'

But she smiled at me so sadly
That my anger straightway died

[Chorus]
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale


[Verse 4]
If music be the food of love
Then laughter is its queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed
[Chorus]
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

How to Format Lyrics:

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  • Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
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About

Genius Annotation

The first and most famous hit single of the early progressive rock group Procol Harum

and found on the album with the same name.

The song was written in 1967, before the Summer of Love and became one of its anthems.

Procol Harum – named after a Burmese cat belonging to a friend of the group’s manager. It is believed to mean “Beyond these far off things” in (misspelled) Latin.

Keith Reid, who wrote the lyrics, said about the song (from songfacts):

It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It’s about a relationship. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. It’s got a thread running through it….I feel with songs that you’re given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale,’ and I thought, There’s a song here. And it’s making up the puzzle that fits the piece you’ve got. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did Procol Harum say about "A Whiter Shade of Pale"?
Genius Answer

Keith Reid told Uncut magazine:

I was trying to conjure a mood as much as tell a straightforward, girl-leaves-boy story. With the ceiling flying away and room humming harder, I wanted to paint an image of a scene. I wasn’t trying to be mysterious with those images, I was trying to be evocative. I suppose it seems like a decadent scene I’m describing. But I was too young to have experienced any decadence, then. I might have been smoking when I conceived it, but not when I wrote. It was influenced by books, not drugs.

Credits
Produced By
Release Date
May 12, 1967
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