"It's my yard So I will try hard To welcome friends I have yet to know! Oh, I'll plant My own tree My own tree and I'll make it grow!"
Okay, it's from "Valley of the Dolls" but it was SUPPOSED to be a Broadway show. (I'm still mystified what exactly that musical was supposed to be about -- a woman sings a "triumphant" number inside a giant mobile, a Vegas showgirl in headdress is in it, a girl sings a song on top of a box ...)
"Which way's the party?/Which way's the next keg of Winkie beer?"
On a cool San Francisco night, that little lyric managed to single-handedly crush all hopes I had for Wicked making a successful book-to-musical transition. On the upside, they had the presence of mind to cut the offending song before it got to Broadway. On the downside...we got "Dancing Through Life" in its place.
"To kill outside St. Paul's/requires a lot of balls"
Any line from the terrible song poor David Opatashu had to sing in "Bravo Giovanni" The worst is "Arrivaderchi virture. I don't wanna hurt you" but "Senigore Toscarini (or something like that) here is your knife back, and with my luck they'll go and give me my wife back..." is right down there too.
HOWEVER for all you girls out there looking for a belt audition piece, "I'm All I've Got" the song that won Michelle Lee her Tony award is amazing. How could that song come from the same show?
Joniray, you missed the worst line: "The house began to pitch. The kitchen took a slitch."
You know, making up words that rhyme CAN be done well. Larry Hart did it all the time. Some of his words even entered the language (to speak in the vernacular of the peasantry...) but "slitch??????
To Feodor Sverdlov (god, I'm on a roll tonight) from page one, I agree, that line is pretty bad. And yet the show has the simple and stunningly effective line "Somebody even painted the damn sky, just so Leona could come here and cry."
Concerning Nessa/confess-a, I just wanted to mention that technically this lyric does continue. Schwartz doesn't just add "a" to "confess." It's "Nessa, uh, Nessa, I've got something to confess - a reason why, well, why I asked you here tonight." Not the best rhyme in the world, but an actual rhyme to say the least and A LOT better than a lot of these other things. LOL...whoever mentioned the dreadful Jellicle cat song was right on. It's pretty easy to "rhyme" if you are just repeating the same phrase over and over... Updated On: 3/17/05 at 01:33 AM
"I am a Las who alas loves a lad who once I had in canabury, Tis a Row Dow Dee Doll Dow Day, Tis a Row Dow Dee Doll Dow Day"
sondheim is a genius and I love Sweeney Todd but I can't stand Parlor Songs, especially the part above.
<------ Me and my friends with patti Lupone at my friends afterparty for her concert with audra mcdonald during the summer of 2007.
"I am sorry but it is an unjust world and virtue is only triumphant in theatricle performances" The Mikado
In defense of what someone said about the "little elf" line in Jane Eyre: a lot of the lyrics were taken from the actual text of the novel. I know that's not much of an excuse, but I think they were really trying to be faithful to the novel - and they were, to an extent.
I hate when show titles are repeated: "...WICKED! WICKED! WICKED!" and "RENT RENT RENT RENT RENT!". When I first heard that last one, I literally thought, "Are they for real? This sounds like something The Simpsons would do as a parody".
Jekyll and Hyde is full of them, especially "Murder! Murder!". Oh, and the "First Transformation"? A violent transformation...set to waltz music. It makes me laugh every time - almost like "The Proposal" in Jane Eyre ("Because the pain, because the grief is slowly turning to rage")...sorry, Jane, but it's hard to take you seriously when such happy-sounding music is being played.
Nobody in all of Oz No wizard that there is..or was.
uuughhhh.
"No two shows are alike in the making. Each show is a living
piece of your life in a small unreal world with its own character
and integrity; its own new set of memorable experiences and
incredible happenings. You begin to love and adapt to its strangeness.
Dreams harden into substance. Values come into focus. You wish
it would never end. The dream world vanishes like mist before a
rising sun; part of you vanishes with it. And back you land in the
real world with a thud- fogged, uneasy, jittery, difficult to get
along with. There is only one cure. A new show. A new, small
unreal world; new visions, experiences, incredible happenings.
Again you love it, adapt to it, wish it would never end.
But end it does. Another part of you vanishes.
That's show business."-Anonymous