Bad Lyrics — Page 2

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.

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.)

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.

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I'm surprised nobody has brought up Jekyll & Hyde

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

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.

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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

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

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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!

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.

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.

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VICTOR/VICTORIA

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My local library has that cast recording. Oy.

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

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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.

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