Lily Was Here

Lily Was Here: David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer’s Summer Saxophone

An Unlikely Pairing Produces an Unlikely Hit

Cinema and pop music have always had a productive relationship, but it is rarer for an instrumental track from a film score to climb all the way to the top quarter of the American singles chart. Lily Was Here managed exactly that, emerging from the 1989 Dutch film De Kassiere to become one of the more unexpected crossover successes of 1991. The film’s music was conceived by David A. Stewart, the British musician best known as one half of the Eurythmics alongside Annie Lennox. For the soundtrack, he sought out Candy Dulfer, a young Dutch saxophonist who had been playing professionally since her early teens and whose reputation in European jazz and pop circles was already considerable. Their collaboration produced something that neither had quite made before: a piece of instrumental pop with genuine mainstream appeal.

Candy Dulfer and the Saxophone’s Return

By 1991, the saxophone had spent several years as a diminished presence in mainstream pop. The instrument’s high-profile moments in the previous decade had passed, and synthesizer textures had taken over much of the sonic territory it once occupied. Dulfer’s playing on the track reintroduced the instrument with remarkable commercial effect. Her tone is warm and expressive without tipping into the smooth jazz register that might have softened the song’s edge. Dulfer was just eighteen years old when she participated in these sessions, a fact that makes the assurance of her playing all the more striking to encounter on first listen.

A Summer Ascent on the American Charts

The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 on May 18, 1991, debuting at number 91. From that modest entry it climbed with steady purpose through the summer, spending 16 weeks on the chart in total and reaching its peak of number 11 on July 13, 1991. For an instrumental track, especially one that originated in a foreign film, this was a genuinely impressive chart performance. Adult contemporary radio embraced it enthusiastically, and the track’s melodic accessibility across language barriers made it easy to program alongside vocal singles without creating jarring tonal shifts. The saxophone melody was catchy enough to function like a vocal hook.

The Sound and Its Appeal

Part of what makes the track work is Stewart’s production instinct for texture and space. The arrangement isn’t cluttered. The rhythm section maintains a relaxed groove that keeps things moving without urgency, and Dulfer’s saxophone carries the melodic burden with a flowing quality that suits the piece’s cinematic origins perfectly. It sounds like music designed to score emotional scenes, which it was, and that quality gives it an associative richness that purely promotional pop singles often lack. The track has accumulated 36 million YouTube views, sustained by listeners who respond to the particular warmth and openness the recording provides.

A Launch Pad for Dulfer’s Career

For David Stewart, the track was a demonstration of creative range outside the Eurythmics context. For Dulfer, it was a career-making moment on an international scale. The exposure from the American chart run gave her a platform from which she built a substantial solo career, releasing numerous albums and maintaining a touring presence that has lasted decades. Lily Was Here remains the piece most casual music fans associate with her name, the track that introduced her saxophone to ears that had never encountered it before. Give it a full listen and pay close attention to what she does in the second half, when the melody opens up and the instrument seems to breathe with particular freedom. The restraint of the first half makes the later passages land with correspondingly greater weight, and that structural sense tells you something important about how Dulfer approaches phrasing across a full performance rather than treating each moment as its own isolated event.

"Lily Was Here" — David A. Stewart Introducing Candy Dulfer’s singular moment on the 1990s charts.