The best rhymes in musical theater history

"Such lovely Blue Danube-y

Music, how can you be

Still"

(DO I HEAR A WALTZ?--Sondheim lyric)

"Please Hello" is great fun as a pastiche number.

But compare it to "Ladies Who Lunch" or the original lyric to "We're Gonna Be Alright", both of which are just as full of internal rhyme without calling unnecessary attention.

(I.e., I'm acknowledging that the rhyming of "Please Hello" is a deliberate and skillful spoof of Gilbert, but arguing that even greater skill was require to do the same thing less intrusively in other songs.)

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And while I'm sounding cranky (I'm not, really; I'm just saying), I think "It's harder than a matador coercin' a bull" is far worse than anything in "I Feel Pretty", a lyric which Sondheim allowed Sheldon Harnick to ruin for him. I realize "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" is a comment song and doesn't have to follow strict rules of character, but the "bull" line is virtually incomprehensible in the theater (unless you already know it from the recording). The problem is that the listener needs the image of a matador coercing (not the verb anyone would use) a bull to understand "to try to get you off of your rump"; yet the listener also needs the rump image to understand the coercing. The lyric just goes by too fast to do all those calculations on first hearing.

Quite uncharacteristic for Sondheim, if you ask me.

"i feel dizzy, i feel sunny, i feel fizzy and funny and fine"

"though you may not agree today, in time, mais oui, we may"

"Which do you pick: where you're safe, out of sight and yourself but where everything's wrong? or where everything's right and you know that you'll never belong?"

"it's a very short road from the pinch and the punch to the paunch and the pouch and the pension. it's a very short road to the ten thousandth lunch and the belch and the grouch and the sigh"

"Mama said: honey, mustn't be blue. it's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do."

I fear that the lyrics may not be exactly as I remember them (and frequently sing to myself), but it doesn't change the brilliance of the precise lyrics. Here goes:

SONDHEIM:

Lucy is juicy but terribly drab

Jessie is dressy but cold as a slab

Jessie wants to be Lucy

Lucy wants to be Jessie

Thats the sorrowful precis

Its very messy



Wear your hair down and a flower

Don't use make-up, dress in white

She'll grow older by the hour

And be hopelessly shattered by Saturday night



That's the puddle where the poodle did the piddle



It's you for me

And me for you

We'll muddle through

Whatever we do







NON-SONDHEIM:

The entire song 'You're the Top'...if I had to single out a segment:

You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss

You're a Shakespeare sonnet

A Bendel bonnet

You're Mickey Mouse



I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS AMONG THE BEST OR WORSE:

You get enough germs to catch pneumonia

After you do, he'll never phone ya

One of my favorites, although certainly not the best, is from Into the Woods:

"Into the woods to get the thing that makes it worth the journeying."

I don't know why I love it so much, I just do.

From Little Shop:

What we have here is an ethical dilemma
'Less I help him get the mask removed he doesn't have a prayer
True the gun was never fired
But the way events transpired
I could finish him with simple laissez faire

And from Reefer Madness: (...there are so many good ones in Reefer Madness!)

The wafers now don't taste so great
They won't transubstantiate

Updated On: 1/16/17 at 07:33 PM

The entirety of "Unusual Way," from Nine is pretty stunning to me.



I also really get a kick out of "Uh-oh! You made the wrong sucker a cuckold. It's time to pay the Piper for the pants you unbuckled," from Hamilton.

My favorite lyricist was Lorenz Hart and Babes in Arms may have been his greatest show. There are two many beautiful rhymes in "My Funny Valentine" to quote. In the song "Way Out West," I've always liked:

Those 'forty niners

Who would stake a claim were hearty

I'll join the diners

And I'll claim a steak at Sardi!

In A Connecticut Yankee, "To Keep My Love Alive" is filled with brilliant rhymes. For example:

Sir Thomas played the harp, I cussed the thing

I crowned him with the harp to bust the thing

And now he plays where harps are just the thing

Other favorites:

Sondheim/West Side Story: I Feel Pretty (already mentioned)

Lerner/My Fair Lady & Camelot

For example in C'est Moi:

I've never strayed from all I believe

I'm blessed with an iron will

If I'd been made the partner of Eve

We'd be in Eden still!

Updated On: 1/16/17 at 08:31 PM

If I stumbled and I busted my what-you-may-call-it
I could lie on your floor unnoticed
'Till my body had turned to carrion.... Madam Librarian

"I was unwise with eyes unable to see" gets me every time, but now that it's been mentioned, "pneumonia / phone ya" is surely the best rhyme ever written, period.

Two Sondheim rhymes are at the top of my list -

"We've no time to sit and dither,
While her wither's wither with her, and no one keeps a cow for a friend." from Into the Woods, and

And from A Little Night Music -

"It's a very short road
From the pinch and the punch
To the paunch and the pouch and the pension
It's a very short road
To the ten thousandth lunch
And the belch and the grouch and the sigh"

From Not Getting Married:

Go! Can't you go, why is nobody listening?

Goodbye, go and cry at another person's wake.

If you're quick, for a kick, you could pick up a christening,

But please, on my knees, there's a human life at stake!