Bad Lyrics- Page 2

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 5:16pm

Chichi and AC, I love William Finn second only to Sondheim among active composers and lyricists, but I agree he sometimes allows his rhyming to lead a lyric astray. To wit:

"It's not genetic.
Everything can be copacetic."

(Okay, that one sort of works because there's a running joke about Mendel getting tangled in his own language, but basically the "copacetic" line isn't something we need to hear.)

But cooking/feeding/eating as metaphors for loving are central to all THE MARVIN PLAYS, so in that context,

"We love to eat
And we need something sweet
To Love"

Seems a culmination of all the feeding/loving imagery that has come before.

Just my opinion, of course.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 5:21pm

From some off-off-Broadway musical I was forced to attend because the husband of a friend was playing the lead, the opening two lines:

MARRIAGE MEANS MONOGAMY,
THEY'LL NEVER MAKE A HOG OF ME!

This couplet was repeated several times during the opening number and yet I never did figure out what it was supposed to mean. I can't even tell you whether being "made a hog" meant one is or is not monogamous. (I asked the friend who sang it what it meant; he didn't know either.)

Nor do I know who told the writers that the first two lines of a musical must be a rhymed couplet. As a rule, I'd say not.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 5:36pm

Chichi and AC, I love William Finn second only to Sondheim among active composers and lyricists, but I agree he sometimes allows his rhyming to lead a lyric astray.

I totally agree and would add that there is a whole thread now devoted to Sondheim doing the very same thing.

As for Spring Awakening, I can't stand most of the lyrics. I do think it's humorous that the biggest complaint in the past has been over the "blah blah blah" lyrics which I find to be some of the most astute lyrics in the show. Lyrics don't have to be elevated or refined to be logical and appropriate. They also don't have to be inexplicably abstract to be artistic or profound.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 5:40pm

I know the thread you mean, Matt, and have posted in it extensively. I don't see the same issue in Sondheim's work. Sondheim may occasionally be guilty of rhymes that call undue attention to themselves, but Finn's rhymes sometimes drag a character onto an entirely different train of thought. (All this from someone who loves both writers, BTW.)

[michellek45]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 5:59pm

I realize what "where the figs lie" is referring to, it just sounds really awkward. Especially since that reference only really makes sense in terms of fig leaves. I just keep picturing fruit...I also have no idea what the "golden fin" verse is about.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 6:07pm

Gaveston - I never noticed a Finn rhyme derailing a character's line of thought. But I believe you if you've picked up on it. There was nothing truly glaring to me in a Finn tune that bothered me, I guess. What I meant by Sondheim was that his lyrics can be a bit overly complex in that they will sail by before you've had a chance to decipher the contents of the rhyme unless you've listened repeatedly.

And I do love both writers as well. I think they're both geniuses, though I tend to have more emotional connection to Finn's work. But for ingenuity and innovation, I think Sondheim is rightfully the best.

[AC126748]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 6:16pm

I actually like a lot of Finn's work, but I think--like *many* composers who do both--his strengths lie in his music far more than his lyrics. I love Michael John Lachiusa and enjoy a lot of Jason Robert Brown, and I'd say the same thing about them, too. Finn has great ideas with what he wants to do with his text, but I'm often left chuckling at the sophomoric level of some of it. (But then he writes something like "Holding to the Ground" and I'm reminded of his flashes of brilliance) That said, I'll take almost all of the haunting music in ELEGIES, sans the often giggle-inducing lyrics and endless "da da dums".

[AwesomeDanny]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 6:24pm

I'm surprised nobody has brought up Jekyll & Hyde

"To kill outside St. Paul's
Requires a lot of balls!"

[Overkill]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 6:32pm

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN seemed like they wrote it over cocktails.

"HE'S LOOSE"

[Three Solo Villagers]
He's Loose!
He's Loose!
He's Loose, He's Loose, He's Loose!
He's Loose, He's Loose, He's Loose!
He's Loose!
He's Loose!
He's Loose!

[Kemp]
They released a horror,
they released a fright!
Lurking in the darkness,
waiting in the night!

For this act of madness
There is no excuse!
Don't you see, he is free

[The Villagers]
He's Loose, He's loose, he's loose!

[Kemp]
He will sack our village,
He will break our backs!
He will rape and pillage,
stop him in his tracks!

[The Villagers]
Catch him by the neck
Put it in a noose!

Can't you see,
He is free!
He's loose!
He's loose!
He's loose!

[The Villagers]
Search the marshes,
ev'ry glade and glen!
Catch the monster before he strikes again!

[Kemp]
Bar your windows, lock your dwellings
Hello heartaches, goodbye kvellings
Ev'ryone!
Ev'ryone!

[The Villagers]
Search each hill and valley,
find which way he fled!
Comb each street and alley,
or else we'll all be dead!

[Kemp]
He's loose!
He's loose!

[The Villagers]
He's loose!
He's loose!
He's loose!
He's loose!
He's loose!
He's loose!
He's loose!


This was on Broadway. Seriously.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 8:14pm

Mister Matt, I was expressing my general impression of Finn's lyrics. I'm so accustomed to his work at this point that I'd have to do a lot of research to give you examples of wandering.

Because his odd rhyming isn't always a bad thing, by any means. These lines from FALSETTOLAND, for example, where Marvin sings to a sleeping Whizzer:

I halt.
I stammer.
I sing a rondelay.
What more can I say?

Now technically, Marvin is not a character who sings rondelays and, anyway, what does singing a rondelay have to do with being tongue-tied (as implied by the rest of the lyric)? Yet I LOVE the rondelay reference precisely because it isn't carefully literal and exact. As when Marvin sings that he can't tie his own shoe, I believe the rondelay reference means that he acts foolishly around Whizzer. But I'm not 100% sure and that's okay.

So Finn's willingness to wander in search of rhyme is both a strength and a weakness, and at the end of the day, I'm willing to forgive it.

***

As for Sondheim, I don't think this is a "bad" lyric, but I've seen INTO THE WOODS pre-, on and after Broadway, and in countless college productions, and in every case there is an awkward pause at the end of Red Riding Hood's number:

Isn't it nice to know a lot
And a little bit not?

The pause is where the audience thinks "Not what? She didn't finish her thought. Oh, maybe, she means to refer back to the previous thought. Yes, that's it: she means a little bit not nice." Meanwhile, Red's button is missed and her applause cut by at least half. Which wouldn't matter except that meanwhile, the viewer is out of the play and working the puzzle in his head.

As I said, not "bad", but certainly an unfortunate place to force the audience to decipher an encrypted lyric.

A final and very general opinion: Lapine is an excellent director (nothing beats his staging of MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS, IMO), but he doesn't seem as strict an editor of Sondheim as Prince and Laurents appeared to be.

Updated On: 11/4/11 at 08:14 PM

[morosco]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 9:01pm

"Paris Makes Me Horny"

Rome maybe hot, sexy it is not.
Paris is so sexy.
Ridin' in a taxi gives me apoplexy.
Been ta Lisbon and Lisbon is a has-been.
Schlepped ta Stockholm, an' brought a lotta schlock home.
Also Oslo, and Oslo really was slow.
Paris makes me horny;
It's not like "Californy"
Paris is so dizzy;
Jack , it's such an aphrodisiac! oooooh!
It's true. Paris thrills me.
When I see the Eiffel Tower,
I have to go and take a shower.
It's true, I do.
Paris kills me,
And it makes me sexy.
As for Madrid, save it for El Cid.
Dinin' at the Lido loosens my libido
Like a big torpedo.
Seen Geneva, it's hardly jungle fever.
Been ta Bussels could use some red corpuscles.
Tried Toronto, departed "molto pronto".
Paris makes me tingle;
Makes me glad and single.
London's okay, if it's for one day.
Oh, but Paris makes me sexy
In this solar plexy
Been ta Munich, where ev'ry guy's a eunuch.
An' ta Dublin, things ain't exactly bubblin'.
Hate Helsinki, the Finns are kinda kinky
But Paris...my ...ah, ah, ah, Paris!
Oh, yeah! Paris makes me... oh, oh, oh...Pooky!

[little_sally]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 9:20pm

I can't believe how bad some of the lyrics are in Sister Act.

[anotherhundredpeople2]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 10:10pm

pinoyidol2006, I always just hear the "poor you" as "por you," as in the spanish word for "for" and "you," so it sounds like he's repeating himself.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 11/4/11 at 11:37pm

I'm Sadie, Sadie, married lady
Meet a mortgagee
A girl who's got an icebox
Mit a ten year guarantee!

* * *

which is delightful, except she's not a mortgagee, she's a mortgagor.

This is Fanny Brice, not Fannie Mae!

[canmark]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 9:15am

Although I like the song, I was never sure what this meant:

I could say life is just a bowl of Jell-o
And appear more intelligent and smart

Does saying "Life is just a bowl of Jell-o" make you appear intelligent and smart?

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 1:26pm

Sondheim criticizes "intelligent and smart" as redundant, and he may be right.

But I've always thought Nellie means:

intelligent -- as in possessing a high i.q.

and

smart -- as in hip, "with it", droll.

"Life is just a bowl of jello" is Nellie's idea of the sort of self-consciously witty remark people make at Manhattan cocktail parties to show they are too "cool" to take anything seriously. Of course, Nellie has never been to such a party, so she is only guessing.

This is just my take. The "intelligent and smart" line is rather famously criticized.

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 1:33pm

The problem with the "Nessa" line is that it should really be "the reason" instead of "a reason," shouldn't it?

And this isn't the worst, but I don't like "My father asked who ate the snack / I said that it was my brother Jack" from "Spooky Mormon Hell Dream." Isn't it a coincidence that his brother's name rhymed with "snack"??

The worst that I HAVE heard is "He gives it his all / So why do I sit here, remembering Paul?" from The Baker's Wife.

[pinoyidol2006]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 1:44pm

The Jack/Snack rhyme doesn't bother me too much because Mormons families, in general, are large, and if there's already a Kevin (which was rhymed with "heaven" earlier in the show), a brother named Jack doesn't sound too unlikely.

I hate the whole "Bend and Snap" from Legally Blonde

"It's not the time to overthink
Just try it once he'll buy you a drink

Hey excuse me, would you teach me that
I'm tired of living alone with my cat"

Eww.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 2:11pm

morosco, from where does that awful "Paris Makes Me Horny" lyric come? (I tried googling. Unsurprisingly, I got a lot of links to Paris Hilton.)

[AC126748]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 2:15pm

VICTOR/VICTORIA

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 2:21pm

Thank you, morsoco and AC. You confirmed my worst fears that:

"Victor/Victoria,
Victoria, what a victor you are!"

Might not be the worst lines ever written for a Broadway musical.

Thank God I've reached an age where I don't feel compelled to own every original cast album released. The brief selections from VICTOR/VICTORIA I heard on TV were enough to scare me away from the show and the CD.

[pinoyidol2006]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 3:06pm

My local library has that cast recording. Oy.

Now, I wish Julie Andrews had done more Broadway before her voice changed.

[theatreguy]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 3:21pm

Rachel York deserved a Tony nomination just for having to sing Paris Makes Me Horny eight times a week. She certainly gave it the old college try:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5keq-2wKU68

[pinoyidol2006]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 3:30pm

I thought Julie was the only one who received a nomination that year. Hence the controversial "stand with the egregiously overlooked speech."

I'm still trying to find a situation where I can use that quote.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/6/11 at 6:19pm

Re the Victor/Victoria clip: dear! Oh, dear!