Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (March 29, 1943 - May 17, 2022), known pr… Read Full Bio ↴Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (March 29, 1943 - May 17, 2022), known professionally as Vangelis, was a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, new age, jazz, and orchestral music. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, composing scores for the films Blade Runner, Missing, Antarctica, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and Alexander, and the use of his music in the PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.

After having taken piano lessons, Vangelis began his professional musical career working with several popular bands of the 1960s such as the Forminx and Aphrodite's Child, with the latter's album 666 going on to be recognized as a psychedelic classic. Throughout the 1970s, Vangelis composed music scores for several animal documentaries, including L'Apocalypse des Animaux, La Fête sauvage and Opéra sauvage; the success of these scores brought him into the film scoring mainstream. In the early 1980s, Vangelis formed a musical partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of progressive rock band Yes, and the duo went on to release several albums together as Jon & Vangelis.

In 1981, he composed the score for the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. The soundtrack's single, the film's "Titles" theme, also reached the top of the American Billboard Hot 100 chart and was used as the background music at the London 2012 Olympics winners' medal presentation ceremonies. Vangelis also received acclaim for his synthesizer-based soundtrack for the 1982 film Blade Runner.

Having had a career in music spanning over 70 years and having composed and performed more than 50 albums, Vangelis is considered to be one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music.

Vangelis was born 29 March 1943, in Agria, near Volos, Greece. Largely a self-taught musician, he reportedly began composing at the age of three. His earliest memory is "playing piano, some percussion and whatever else that was available that made a noise. Right from the start, I was only interested in playing my own music". He refused to take traditional piano lessons, and throughout his career did not have substantial knowledge of reading or writing musical notation. When he was six, Vangelis's parents enrolled him at a specialist music school in Athens. He recalls "I was lucky not to go because music schools close doors rather than open them". He studied painting, an art he still practices, at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

In 1989 received Max Steiner Award. France made Vangelis a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1992 and promoted to Commander in 2017, as well Chevalier de la Legion d’ Honneur in 2001. In 1993 received music award Apollo by Friends of the Athens National Opera Society. In 1995, Vangelis had a minor planet named after him (6354 Vangelis) by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; the name was proposed by the MPC's co-director, Gareth V. Williams, rather than by the object's original discoverer, Eugène Joseph Delporte, who died in 1955, long before the 1934 discovery could be confirmed by observations made in 1990. In 1996 and 1997 was awarded at World Music Awards.

NASA conferred their Public Service Medal to Vangelis in 2003. The award is the highest honour the space agency presents to an individual not involved with the American government. Five years later, in 2008, the board of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens voted to make Vangelis an Honorary Doctor, making him Professor Emeritus at their Faculty of Primary Education. In June 2008, the American Hellenic Institute honoured Vangelis with an AHI Hellenic Heritage Achievement Award for his "exceptional artistic achievements" as a pioneer in electronic music and for his lifelong dedication to the promotion of Hellenism through the arts. On 16 September 2013, he received the honour of appearing on the Greek 80 cent postage stamp, as part of a series of six distinguished living personalities of the Greek Diaspora.

Losing Sleep
Vangelis Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Losing sleep
In a waking dream

A recurring face I see
Comes to pass my way

Still, my heart
Will you please be still, my heart

In this world of change
You keep turning me 'round again

In my mind
Could it be that I'm just a fool for love?
Is blind to danger

Is this faith?
Then why should I
Hesitate when love would dance with a stranger?

Shout it loud from the rooftop high
Let it burn inside
And try only to fade and die

If I knew all there was to learn

Every twist and turn
Why do I still try?

Overall Meaning

The opening lines of Vangelis's song, 'Losing Sleep in a Waking Dream' suggests a sense of anxiety and unrest with lyrics suggesting that the singer is having trouble sleeping and is caught up in a sort of dream-like state. The line "A recurring face I see comes to pass my way" implies that there is someone or something on the singer's mind that is causing them distress, and the repetition of the phrase "Still, my heart", followed by a plea for it to be "still", suggests that the singer is feeling overwhelmed by their emotions.

As the song progresses, the singer wonders if they are "just a fool for love" and whether their feelings are leading them blindly into danger. This conflict between the head and the heart is further highlighted in the lines "Is this faith? Then why should I hesitate when love would dance with a stranger?", suggesting that the singer knows that their feelings may not be entirely rational, but they are still drawn towards this person.

However, even though the singer may be feeling unsure and uneasy, the song still holds an underlying message of hope, encouraging the singer to "shout it loud from the rooftop high" and embrace their feelings, despite the uncertainty that comes with it. The final line, "If I knew all there was to learn, every twist and turn, why do I still try?" suggests that sometimes, despite our best efforts to comprehend our own emotions and the world around us, there are still mysteries that we cannot fully understand, and therefore, we must trust in love and take risks.

Line by Line Meaning

Losing sleep
Unable to sleep

In a waking dream
Daydreaming while awake

A recurring face I see
A person's face that appears in the dream repeatedly

Comes to pass my way
Appears in real life unexpectedly

Still, my heart
Despite this

Will you please be still, my heart
Can you stop beating so fast, my heart?

In this world of change
In a constantly changing world

You keep turning me 'round again
You keep making me feel a range of emotions again and again

In my mind
In my thoughts

Could it be that I'm just a fool for love?
Am I foolishly in love?

Is blind to danger
Unable to see potential risks