re: super clever lyrics
Posted by: FleetStreetBarber 03:55 pm EDT 10/11/24
In reply to: re: super clever lyrics - emmemmkay 12:13 pm EDT 10/08/24

And while we’re on the subject of Irving Berlin, I’d cite almost everything from “Annie Get Your Gun,” especially…

"Granpa Bill lives on the hill with someone he just married,
There he is at ninety-three doin’ what comes naturally."

As for Sondheim, I have always admired this simple, unexpected rhyme from “Night Music”:

"The hands on the clock turn
But don’t sing a nocturne
Just yet."

And almost everything of Harburg’s is bliss, such as this from “The Happiest Girl in the World”: “Whatever is chaste, has got to be chased.” (Or is it the other way around? Anyone know?)

And having recently seen “Kiss Me, Kate” in London, I’m reminded of some of the bawdy lyrics from “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”:

“If she says your behavior is heinous,
Kick her right in the “Coriolanus”

And

“When your baby is pleading for pleasure,
Let her sample your ‘Measure for Measure.’”

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve enjoyed the satirical songs of Tom Lehrer. Lehrer who is still with us at 96 and was the subject of at least one off-Broadway review, “Tomfoolery,” was never more clever than in his retelling of the moral to be learned from Oedipus:

“So be sweet and kind to mother now and then, have a chat
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand new hat
But maybe you had better let it go at that
Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex
And you may end up like Oedipus
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex”
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