Billie Holiday – recorded in New York on Ap.Fred Astaire with Johnny Green and His Orchestra – recorded Ma.The melodic hardcore band Strung Out also sampled the song for the intro of 'Analog', the opening track on their 2004 album Exile in Oblivion. Holland's Opus (1995), and in Barry Levinson's Rain Man (1988).

The song is featured in Kenneth Branagh's musical version of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost (2000), in Stephen Herek's Mr. George Gershwin died two months after the film's release, and he was posthumously nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 1937 Oscars but lost out to ' Sweet Leilani' which had been made tremendously popular by Bing Crosby. They may take you from me, I'll miss your fond caress, but though they take you from me I'll still possess. The song is ended, but as the songwriter wrote, 'the melody lingers on'. Our romance won't end on a sorrowful note, though by tomorrow you're gone. The verse references the song ' The Song Is Ended (but the Melody Lingers On)' by Irving Berlin: Thus, it is a song of mixed joy and sadness. The basic meaning of the song is that even if the lovers part, though physically separated the nostalgic memories cannot be forced from them. Each verse is followed by the line 'no, no, they can't take that away from me'. The lyrics include 'the way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea', and 'the way you hold your knife, the way we danced till three'. The song, in the context of Shall We Dance, notes some of the things that Peter (Astaire) will miss about Linda (Rogers). Astaire and Rogers did dance to it later in their last movie The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) in which they played a married couple with marital issues. No dance sequence follows, which was unusual for the Astaire-Rogers numbers. It is sung to Ginger Rogers, who remains silent listening throughout. The song is performed by Astaire on the lonely foggy deck of a ferry from New Jersey to Manhattan.

Oblivion song jacks song