Movie Poster for "The Thomas Crown Affair"
"The Windmills of Your Mind" is a song with music by French composer Michel Legrand and English lyrics written by Americans Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The French lyrics were written by Eddy Marnay under the title "Les Moulins de mon cœur". The song (with the English lyrics) was introduced in the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in the same year. In 2004, "Windmills of Your Mind" was ranked 57 in AFI's "100 Years...100 Songs" survey of top songs in American cinema. A cover by Sting was used in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.
Composition/original recording 
In the original 1968 film, the song is performed by Noel Harrison during the opening credits as well as in a scene in which the character Thomas Crown flies a glider at the glider airport in Salem, New Hampshire. Having edited the "rough cut" for this scene utilizing the Beatles track "Strawberry Fields Forever", producer/director Norman Jewison commissioned an original song be written for the glider scene which would reference the ambivalent feelings of Thomas Crown as he engages in a favorite pastime while experiencing the tension of preparing to commit a major robbery.
A-side label of UK vinyl single
Alan Bergman said: "Michel [Legrand] played us [ie. Alan and Marilyn Bergman] seven or eight melodies. We listened to all of them and decided to wait until the next day to choose one. We three decided on the same one, a long baroque melody... The lyric we wrote was stream-of-consciousness. We felt that the song had to be a mind trip of some kind" – "The [eventual] title was [originally] a line at the end of a section... When we finished we said: "What do we call this? It's got to have a title. That line is kind of interesting.' So we restructured the song so that the line appeared again at the end. It came out of the body of the song. I think we were thinking, you know when you try to fall asleep at night and you can't turn your brain off and thoughts and memories tumble."
Noel Harrison recorded the song after Andy Williams passed on it: according to Harrison: "It was recorded live on a huge sound stage at Paramount, with the accompanying film clips running on a giant screen and Michel blowing kisses to the orchestra." Harrison took issue with the couplet "Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own / Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone", singing the word "shone" British-style with a short vowel sound making the rhyme with "own" imperfect. Marilyn Bergman stated: "We said 'No, it's shone [long vowel sound].' And he said 'No, it's our language!' And we said: 'Yes, but it's our song.' So reluctantly, he sang shone [long vowel sound] and our rhyme was intact." However, Harrison evidently had the last laugh; in the finally released version he sings "shone" with a short vowel. Harrison's version had a US single in the US in July 1968 soon after the premiere of the film and similarly was released in the British Isles at the time of the film's 7 February 1969 premiere in the UK and Ireland. As a result, it was a current UK release when "The Windmills of Your Mind" received an Academy Award nomination on 24 February 1969: Harrison's single debuted at #36 in the UK Top 50 dated 4 March 1969 and had risen to #15—abetted by performances by Harrison on the 27 March 1969 broadcast of TOTP and also on variety shows hosted by Rolf Harris and Scott Walker—when the song won the Academy Award on 14 April 1969, an endorsement which facilitated the Top Ten entry of Harrison's single on the UK chart dated 22 April 1969 with its chart peak of #8 effected two weeks later.
"The Windmills of Your Mind" was performed on the Academy Awards ceremony broadcast of 14 April 1969 by José Feliciano as Harrison was unavailable. Noel Harrison would recall: "I was invited to sing it at the Academy Awards... but I was making a movie in England at the time, and the producer (who didn't like me) refused to let me go."
The film which caused the scheduling conflict has been identified as Take a Girl Like You directed by Jonathan Miller.
Dusty Springfield version
Jerry Wexler, president of Atlantic Records, heard "The Windmills of Your Mind" on the soundtrack of The Thomas Crown Affair and championed having Dusty Springfield record the song for her debut Atlantic album Dusty in Memphis, overcoming the singer's strong resistance; Springfield's friend and subsequent manager Vicki Wickham would allege: "Dusty always said she hated it because she couldn't identify with the words." During the first sessions for the track at American Sound Studio in Memphis, problems with getting the proper chords down arose, and at Springfield's suggestion the song was arranged so the first three verses were sung in a slower tempo than the original film version.
In April 1969 the third A-side release from Dusty in Memphis was announced as "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore" with "The Windmills of Your Mind" as B-side, however Wexler was prepared to promote "Windmills" as the A-side if it won the Oscar for Best Song, reportedly instructing mail-room clerks at Atlantic Records' New York City headquarters to listen to the Academy Awards broadcast the night of 14 April 1969; hearing "The Windmills" announced as the Best Song winner was these clerks' cue to drive a station wagon loaded with 2500 copies of a double-sided promo single of Springfield's version – identified on the label as "Academy Award Winner" – to the New York City general post office, where the copies of the single were mailed out to key radio stations across the US. Although its Hot 100 debut was not effected until the 5 May 1969 issue of Billboard and then with a #99 ranking, Springfield's "The Windmills" made a rapid ascent to the Top 40 being ranked at #40 on the Hot 100 dated 24 May 1969 only to stall over the subsequent three weeks peaking at #31 on the Hot 100 dated 14 June 1969 with only one additional week of Hot 100 tenure, being ranked at #45 on the 21 June 1969 chart. On the Cash Box chart, the song rose as high as #22. Local hit parades indicate that Springfield's "Windmills" had Top Ten impact in only select larger markets: Boston, Southern California, and Miami. The track did reach #3 on the Easy Listening chart in Billboard a feat matched by Springfield's third subsequent single "Brand New Me" which therefore ties with "The Windmills" as having afforded Springfield her best-ever solo showing on a Billboard chart.
José Feliciano version
"The Windmills of Your Mind" was recorded by José Feliciano for his 1969 album "10 to 23", and Feliciano performed the song on the Academy Awards ceremony broadcast of 14 April 1969; the song's original singer Noel Harrison would later opine of Feliciano's performance: "A wonderful musician and compelling singer, he made much too free with the beautiful melody in my humble opinion. But that's jazz."
It was Feliciano's version of "The Windmills" which became a hit in the Netherlands, reaching #11 on the Dutch chart in November 1969. and Nr. 4 in the Turkish hit parade in April 1970.
Other Versions
It should be noted that there are at least 8 other versions including the 1999 release by Sting, which brought the song back into the forefront of popular culture.
The ones listed above are considered to be the "most popular" of all time.
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Lyrics to "The Windmills of your Mind"
https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/noel-harrison/the-windmills-of-your-mind
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Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?
Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!
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