"Walking in the Air" is a song written by Howard Blake for the 1982 animated film of Raymond Briggs' 1978 children's book The Snowman. The song forms the centrepiece of The Snowman, which has become a seasonal favorite on British and Finnish television. The story relates the fleeting adventures of a young boy and a snowman who has come to life. In the second part of the story, the boy and the snowman fly to the North Pole. "Walking in the Air" is the theme for the journey. They attend a party of snowmen, at which the boy seems to be the only human until they meet Father Christmas with his reindeer, and the boy is given a scarf with a snowman pattern. In the film, the song was performed by St Paul's Cathedral choirboy Peter Auty, and reissued in 1985 (on Stiff Records) and 1987.
Contents
In 1985, an altered version was recorded for use in a TV advertising campaign for Toys "R" Us. As Auty's voice had then broken, Blake recommended the Welsh chorister Aled Jones, whose recording reached number five in the UK pop charts, and who became a popular celebrity on the strength of his performance. The association of the song with Jones, combined with the fact that Auty was not credited on The Snowman, would lead to a common misbelief that Jones performed the song in the film. "Walking in the Air" has subsequently been covered by over forty artists, in a variety of styles.
Howard Blake developed the melody of "Walking in the Air" from a theme in his 'Lullaby - A Christmas Narrative,' an a cappella choral work commissioned by The Scholars in 1975 and first performed by them at St John's Smith Square, London, on 21 December that year.