Zombies – This Will Be Our Year

The warmth of your love
Is like the warmth of the sun
And this will be our year
Took a long time to come

I love tradition, so here we are again! Happy New Year 2026. Next to Auld Lang Syne, this is my favorite New Year’s Song. A favorite of mine from one of my favorite bands and one of my favorite albums of all time (no pressure!). Have you ever had a song that would bring out an emotion in you? This one does it for me: hope, clarity, mixed with calm.

For the past few years, this has been my first post in the New Year. If you have followed me for a while, you should know this one. Again, for 2026, my first post! I have added some more context to the song this year. 

There’s something quite miraculous about the way this song opens, like a warm and comfortable exhale. A few soft notes drift in like morning light through the curtain, and suddenly you’re there. The reason I like this song so much?  The Zombies had a knack for making hope sound earned. This track is one of the gentlest and nicest declarations of optimism I’ve ever heard. 

This song sounds like it should have been a hit, but it was never pushed as a single at the time. It was the B side to Butcher’s Tale  (Western Front 1914), which is an experimental song, and it was a big surprise to the band that it was picked as the first single. Both are from the great album Odessey and Oracle in 1968. Several songs on this album could have been in the charts, but Time of the Season was the only one that made it, and it was a year after the album was released.

 Tell Her No, She’s Not There, and Time Of The Season. They are best remembered for those three hits, but also for one album…Odessey and Oracle.  With this album, they elevated themselves to new heights…but that took a little while. In Rolling Stone magazine in the ’80s and ’90s, I read great write-ups about this album. Finally, I tried it for myself and was more than happy I did. Many critics hailed this album as one of the greatest of the decade, and it lived up to their hype.

By the way… The band wanted to call the album “Odyssey and Oracle,” but cover artist Terry Quirk accidentally spelled the title wrong, and the band decided to run with the misspelling.

On recording Odessey and Oracle…Rod Argent:

“We had the chance of going in and putting things down in the way we wanted people to hear them and we had a new studio, we walked in just after The Beatles had walked out [after recording Sgt. Pepper]. We were the next band in. They’d left some of their instruments behind … I used John Lennon’s Mellotron, that’s why it’s all over Odessey and Oracle. We used some of their technological advances … we were using seven tracks, and that meant we could overdub for the first time. And it meant that when I played the piano part I could then overdub a Mellotron part, and it meant we could have a fuller sound on some of the songs and it means that at the moment the tour we’re doing with Odessey and Oracle it means we’re actually reproducing every note on the original record by having extra player with us as well.”

I hope you all had a fun and safe New Year’s! Also, do yourself a favor and listen to this album. It’s a masterpiece to me. Care of Cell 44 is brilliant! It’s as if Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney had a baby…that is what this sounds like! The bass is terrific. The fact that The Zombies are not mentioned with the greats shows you that life isn’t fair. 

This Will Be A Year

The warmth of your love
Is like the warmth of the sun
And this will be our year
Took a long time to come

Don’t let go of my hand 
Now darkness has gone
And this will be our year 
Took a long time to come

And I won’t forget 
The way you held me up when I was down
And I won’t forget the way you said, 
“Darling I love you”
You gave me faith to go on

Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun
This will be our year
Took a long time to come

The warmth of your smile
Smile for me, little one
And this will be our year
Took a long time to come

You don’t have to worry
All your worried days are gone
This will be our year
Took a long time to come

And I won’t forget 
The way you held me up when I was down
And I won’t forget the way you said, 
“Darling I love you”
You gave me faith to go on

Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun
And this will be our year
Took a long time to come

Yeah we only just begun
Yeah this will be our year
Took a long time to come

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

28 thoughts on “Zombies – This Will Be Our Year”

  2. Dude, you’re off to a killer new year. I absolutely love this song!!! The Zombies really had some great music. I also just checked and to my big surprise, I’ve yet to cover “This Will Be Our Year” – another track I’m going to write down! 🙂

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    1. Yes…I’m pissed that they are only known for those 3 songs. This one (Check out the Foo Fighters version of this!) and Care of Cell 44….I think Care of Cell 44 is the best thing they ever done…and that is saying a lot. It’s a masterpiece.

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      2. LOL…yes there is! Listen to when the bass comes in…it doesn’t sound like McCartney…is IS McCartney in a lot of ways…no he didn’t play on it but man. I also love the harmony breaks…A college class could be taught on this song because it’s so complex in many ways.

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    1. That is a cool stat…Time of the Season was a hit a year after they broke up. Al Kooper (he is everywhere in pop history isn’t he?) convinced the record company to release Time of the Season…they gave in and it was a hit. Too bad they didn’t stay together to enjoy it.

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  5. Some real good ones in that album, ‘Care of Cell 44’ has really become a song I like a lot in the past few years. Makes you wonder how they chose that Butcher song as a single…not smart, whoever picked it.

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  6. Pingback: Zombies – This Will Be Our Year – MobsterTiger

    1. Yes…I don’t understand why the record company of all people pick that one…why not this one? For me…and yea I go on and on about it…but Care of Cell 44 is my goto song on the album…and A Rose For Emily

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