Unusual pronunciations of words in songs — Page 3

In response to the post about Jack in the Into The Woods OBC, he said EVERYTHING with extremely strange inflection, which I thought was genius for the character (if a little bizarre).

And as for lyrics in Sweeney (tidy/Friday) Sondheim was writing with the accent in mind, so I don't really count that as unusual.

As someone studying classical singing, I've become extremely bothered by the way Broadway people sing "you." Like "yew." There are very few Broadway people who don't do it (an example of someone who doesn't is Rebecca Luker.) The worst offender IMO is Norbert Leo Butz; in The Last Five Years it really is noticeable. But again, that "you" is more of a classical thing. It's just something that's started to drive me nuts.

The "When I look atchu" thing is an attempt at the French accent, I think... it's always bothered me how Marguerite has a French accent but Armand doesn't, btw.

Anyway...
Evita London Revival has MANY offenses. "You let down your people, Eviter" being the one that stands in my mind.

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[i]Like, he changed the name of the city to make it rhyme with "show." I'm sorry, that's unacceptable even if you're Cole Porter. [/i]

What do you mean "even if you're Cole Porter"? He couldn't stop doing that stupid cutesy thing. Particularly in Kiss Me Kate. "Within our Demo-crassy" is especially egregious, as it comes BEFORE the words it's been changed to rhyme with.

I hate hate HATE people mispronouncing words for cute/humorous effect. There's a girl at work who has taken to saying "crim" instead of "crime" because she thinks it's cutesy, and I am SO CLOSE to ripping her head off it's not even funny. XP

Anyway, tangent over...

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"I hate hate HATE people mispronouncing words for cute/humorous effect. There's a girl at work who has taken to saying "crim" instead of "crime" because she thinks it's cutesy, and I am SO CLOSE to ripping her head off it's not even funny. XP"

Go ahead and rip her head off.

I'm talking about when lyricists rhyme words for a humorous effect, not people in their daily lives;

"I'd go to hell fa ya
Or Philadelphia."

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"Like, he changed the name of the city to make it rhyme with "show." I'm sorry, that's unacceptable even if you're Cole Porter"

I'm sorry for all the offense everyone here will take at what I'm about to say and I will just say that I don't care whose feelings get hurt.

People on this site criticising Cole Porter? It just tells me those people are probably just too dumb to get the jokes.

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Re KISS ME KATE:

The "Baltimo'" pronunciatiion works if, as in the original production, the first chorus of the song is sung by a "big black woman" (to quote marc Shaiman).

The "Gone With the Wined" bit is actually a double joke - a reference to "Gone With the Wind" and a play on the fact that in Shakespeare, the word "wind" was often pronounced to rhyme with "find".

the first noel "look-ed" thing is something that happened frequently in old english - it happens a lot in shakespeare, and it always drives me crazy when people "iron it out", because it screws up the rhythm of the line.

I have no idea if this is intentional, but the song "My High School Sweetheart" from In Trousers, ridiculous is pronounced rid-dik-a-lus.