A serious oldie!
“The House of the Rising Sun” is a traditional folk song (), sometimes called “Rising Sun Blues”. It tells of a person’s life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans ( (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_music (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans))). Many versions also urge a sibling or parents and children to avoid the same fate. The most successful commercial version, recorded in 1964 by the British rock band the Animals, was a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart ( (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Singles_Chart))) and in the US and Canada. As a traditional folk song recorded by an electric rock band, it has been described as the “first folk rock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Rising_Sun#cite_note-the_age-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_rock)))
The song was first collected in Appalachia () in the 1930s, but probably has its roots in traditional English folk song ( (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_folk_music))). It is listed as number 6393 () in the Roud Folk Song Index
