Gibberish lyrics in Broadway musicals?- Page 3

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 2/25/07 at 8:53pm

What gibberish is there in Side Show?

[theminutepast]

Posted: 2/25/07 at 9:36pm

Plumble is funny, but in the reprise for the finale, they sing tumble instead. Anyone else notice this?

[Cape Twirl of Doom]

Posted: 2/26/07 at 12:59am

What gibberish is there in Side Show?

Yeah, I was wondering about that one also.

[mauriposa]

Posted: 2/26/07 at 1:23am

Plumble is funny, but in the reprise for the finale, they sing tumble instead. Anyone else notice this?

What? Goes to iTunes immediately. Wow. I never noticed that. ::hangs head in shame::

[mauriposa]

Posted: 2/26/07 at 1:25am

Although, now that I think about it. It makes sense. I mean, the Chaperone is a bit "drowsy" when she sang it the first time, so it wouldn't have been right for the whole company to sing the nonsense word she made up in her state of drowsiness.

[Josh Freilich]

Posted: 9/22/10 at 8:54pm

Remember the song that used to be sung at the end of that Canadian show when we saw it as kids on Nick Jr. in the '80s, and we thought that they originated it?

WELL, GUESS WHAT? THEY DIDN'T!

The song Skiddy-Mer-Rink-A-Dink-a-Boomp comes from this old 1910 musical The Echo, and it came at the end of the show. It was the "Boola Boola Isle" way of saying "I LOVE YOU." It's all true. I did not make that up.

[newintown]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 11:40am

For "As We Stumble Along," (clear if you saw Beth Leavel perform it), the Chaperone forgets the sequence of words at that point, pauses, and makes up the word that sounds like it should come next:

As we stumble,
bumble,
fumble, <pause>
plumble,

As we stumble along!

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 12:00pm

Thanks, newintown, I was going to point that out. It's also clear when you see it performed that when the entire cast sings the finale, they are sort of reminding the Chaperone what the right word is. I can't really describe what exactly they do to convey this. When they get to that word, everyone looks at the Chaperone and pointedly sings, "Tumble!" and she makes a gesture like, "Oh, yeah, that's it!"

"Agee" is pronounced with a J sound and yes, it means "to one side," so the Major General says "sat agee" to mean "to sit on a horse." Why the Major General rides sidesaddle, I have no idea, but I have always found it extremely impressive that all those words are actual words.

I always enjoy the gibberish in WICKED because it fits in with the world. I appreciate when composers write their songs to match the voice of the character, and these characters use made up words like this all throughout the dialogue, so why not in songs? That wasn't Schwartz being lazy or weird, he was writing for his characters and their world.

[roseaddams]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 2:34pm

I've always been a fan of the nonsense chorus of Don't Quit While You're Ahead from The Mystery of Edwin Drood:

Ta-ray, ta-rah! Boom!
Bang it, bash it, hoo-ray, ha-rah!
Boom! Clang it, clash it,
Ooh, lah-di-dah!
Don't quit while you're ahead.

(I know they're not all technically nonsense words.)

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 2:47pm

The Fish-Schlapping Song from Spamalot

[sparrman]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 3:13pm

A "nonce word" is a word made up for a single purpose.

In the 1973 Cyrano musical, Cyrano's song "The Thither Thother Thide of the Moon" is a big song full of nothing but nonsense and gibberish.
Updated On: 9/23/10 at 03:13 PM

[allofmylife]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 5:45pm

Nobody ever stopped Lorenz (Larry) Hart from using a well-tuned piece of gibberish to complete a rhyme.

[TheatreFan4]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 5:49pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrma76T5Wa4

[After Eight]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 7:05pm

"Boom Ditty Boom" from "70, Girls, 70."

[TressaMay]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 9:07pm

Stephen Schwartz merely was going with the made-up words from all of L. Frank Baum's Oz books. All of them have crazy words in there.

There are no crazy words in other things he's written

[jonartdesigns]

Posted: 9/23/10 at 11:28pm

In the case of Wicked, once you embrace that there is girl who is GREEN in a class taught by a GOAT they can make up all the damn words they want.


An example that popped into my head was the "auctioneer" section of Molasses to Rum in 1776 "Ya Hiiiii ye hoooo hun doooooo-oh"

[sparrman]

Posted: 9/24/10 at 8:50am

If memory serves, Rutledge in "Molasses to Rum" is singing "Ya! Ya, Macunda!", Macunda being a location in Mozambique.

And jonartdesigns, I like your point about the nonsense words in Wicked. They are not, by and large, a feature of Baum's Oz books. Updated On: 9/24/10 at 08:50 AM

[Jon]

Posted: 9/24/10 at 11:38am

In the script of 70 Girls 70, "Boom ditty boom" is described by the leading lady as the sound her heart made the first time she stole something from a store. In the song "Boom Ditty Boom", the gang of old folks are headed off to commit a huge robbery.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 9/24/10 at 8:34pm

SEVERAL MUNCHKINS
The house began to pitch
The kitchen took a slitch

It landed on the Wicked Witch
In the middle of a ditch
Which was not a healthy situation
For the Wicked Witch.

[Jon]

Posted: 9/25/10 at 12:02am

...Who began to twitch
And was reduced to just a stitch
Of what was once a wicked witch!

Yip Harburg loved those rhymes. In Oz, it was the "itch" rhymes. In Finian's Rainbow, he built an entire song around "ish", and in Flahooley, a song built around "eth".

Of course, he also repeated his use of "itch" rhymes in:

When the idle poor
Become the idle rich
You'll never know just who is who
Or which is which.

et cetera...

[James2]

Posted: 9/25/10 at 6:00pm

Much of "Spring Awakening," especially "Touch Me."



Obviously I mean lines rather than words, but you get the idea.