The lyrics I want to quote here are from the successful 1952 musical Wish You Were Here, based on Arthur Kober's play about the guests and staff at a Catskills resort. It's most famous as a show that had a swimming pool in the middle of the stage, and a show that became a hit through canny advertising despite almost uniformly negative reviews. The reviews may have had a point about the production, conceived by acclaimed but ham-handed producer/writer/director Joshua Logan. But Rome's score is one of his best, every number a funny, culturally-specific treat. My favorite song in the show is a throwaway, "Certain Individuals," sung by the second female lead and a chorus of women, teasing the heroine for being so obviously in love:
Certain individuals
Are walking on a rosy cloud,
And certain individuals
Are talking to themselves out loud.
Grinning like a birthday kid
With a brand-new toy,
Looking like Columbus did
When he said "Land ahoy!
(America!)"
Oh, oh, what we know
That we're not telling of,
About certain individuals
Fresh in -- pardon the expression -- love.
Certain individuals
Are feeling like a highness royal,
And certain individuals
Are reeling like they just struck oil.
Shining like a diamond pin
On a diamond chain,
Bubbling like the bubbles in
A glass of two cents plain.
(Or raspberry.)
Oh, oh, what we know
That we're not telling of,
About certain individuals
Fresh in -- pardon the expression -- love.
That's good lyric writing: simple yet cleverly rhymed, suggestive of everyday speech without being a carbon copy of it, full of specific images and fresh takes on familiar expressions.
2 comments:
Thank you thank you thank you. I have been looking for this song for (wow) 56 years now. We must have had the record at my boarding school, but although I remembered the lyrics and melody perfectly had no idea what it was from. Now the problem will be to get a recording!
Harold Rome was a great lyricist i have some of the best collections of his and now would like to include this one also.I also have a blog which you can visit : Watch Rome Episodes Online
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