Written by Billy Hill and originally recorded by clarinetist Benny Goodman, “The Glory of Love” has been covered by many artists including The Andrews Sisters, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin and Paul McCartney. Peggy Lee included the song on her 1958 album Jump For Joy, and her cover was recently featured on the Netflix series Dead To Me, which concluded its run earlier this year. There’s a quick modulation from C up to Db at 2:09
Tag: soundtrack
The Trolley Song (from “Meet Me In St. Louis”)
1944’s Meet Me in St Louis “was the first truly great movie from the Freed unit, the MGM department specializing in musicals and headed since 1940 by Arthur Freed, who wrote some of the best songs of the 1920s and 30s and produced several of the finest films of the 20th century,” (Guardian).
Freed … told studio boss Louis B Mayer: ‘I want to make this into the most delightful piece of Americana ever.’ He achieved his aim with a movie that defines perfection, as it captures the spirit of hope and anxiety that informed the last years of the second world war, when it was made … Judy Garland has never been more spirited or more poignant (‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ is up there with ‘Over the Rainbow’ and ‘The Man That Got Away’).” Much of the plot turns on whether the lead character’s family will move to New York City. “When fellow MGM executives demanded to know the source of the film’s dramatic conflict, Freed replied: ‘Where is the villain? Well, the villain is New York!'”
The chorus initially states the melody in the opening in A major, followed by a delayed intro from Garland at 1:24 and a first verse at 1:55. At 2:59, there’s a shift to C# before 3:14 reverts to A major.
It’s a Great Big World (from “The Harvey Girls”)
“A group of refined waitresses for a chain of railroad-station restaurants in New Mexico are sent out to tame the wild and woolly West in the 19th century, but encounter some resistance in the form of a saloon owner, a corrupt judge and a local madam,” (TV Guide). “Featuring the Oscar-winning song ‘On the Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe.'”
“The Harvey Girls was MGM’s big-budget Technicolor musical follow-up to Meet Me In St. Louis (in between the two Judy filmed her first dramatic role in The Clock as well as her one-scene guest appearance in Ziegfeld Follies),” (TheJudyRoom). “It was based on the 1942 Samuel Hopkins Adams novel of the same name, which was inspired by the real-life ‘Harvey Girls,’ the waitresses who were employed by the Harvey chain of restaurants (still in existence today) placed along the route of the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. The Harvey Girls became one of Judy’s (and MGM’s) biggest musical hits of the 1940s, winning the Oscar for Best Song (‘On The Atchison, Topeka, and The Santa Fe’) and earning a spot on Variety’s list of ‘all-time box office hits.’
“It’s a Great Big World,” a fast but gentle waltz, serves as a feature for several of the musical’s lead characters. It shifts up a half-step at 2:53. Many thanks to our regular contributor Jamie A. for this submission!
Voctave (feat. Mariachi Cobre) | Remember Me
“They say repetition is key to retention,” said Jon Burlingame, writing for Variety. “And in Disney/Pixar’s animated feature “Coco,” the song “Remember Me” is the tie that binds multiple generations in the shared love of music. It is central to the story about a young boy named Miguel who is pulled by the song from the land of the living to the land of the dead, gradually discovering the origins of the composition and awakening his own inner showmanship. Also part of the plotline are recollections of the distant past – hence, the song’s title — and of beloved long gone family members.”
The song won the Academy Award for Best Song in 2018, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and Grammy as well. This cover, by the a cappella group Voctave, features the instrumental group Mariachi Cobre, which regularly performs at Disney and also tours. Two modulations sprinkled in at 0:41 and 1:12.
What Say You Meg? (from “The Last Ship”)
The Last Ship opened on Broadway in October 2014 and played for 3 months. The score, written by Sting, was nominated for a Tony Award. Sting also briefly stepped into the lead role in New York for the final few weeks of the run.
The story, while original, is inspired by memories from Sting’s childhood in Wallsend, England. “I did everything in my power to escape Wallsend… I became successful, but I owe a debt to that community,” Sting said in an interview on public radio. “This play is me trying to honour that community, trying to pay back what they gave me — a sense of self but also the engine that allowed me to escape. That’s the strange paradox. I love where I come from, I’m glad I escaped, at the same time I need to tell that story as a sort of ‘soul debt’.”
Writing the show also helped Sting emerge from a long period of writer’s block. ““I was writing songs for other characters than me, other sensibilities than mine, a different viewpoint,” he told the New York Times. “And so all of that pent-up stuff, all of those crafts I’d developed as a songwriter, I was suddenly free to explore without much thinking, actually. It just kind of came out as a kind of Tourette’s, a kind of projectile vomiting. It just came out, very quickly.”
“What Say You Meg?” is performed here by Sting. Modulation from E up to F# at 2:49.
Wick (from “The Secret Garden”)
Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 book of the same name, The Secret Garden premiered on Broadway in 1991. The Tony-nominated score, written by Marsha Norman (lyrics) and Lucy Simon (music), is one of the most lush and operatic ever written for the musical theater stage. Simon passed away last week at the age of 82.
“Wick,” which comes in Act II, is sung by Martha and her brother Dickon and reflects his delight at teaching her about nature. The song begins in Bb and emerges into C at 1:36. It then modulates up briefly to E for Martha’s verse at 2:00 before returning to C at 2:19. It then shifts to E at 3:31, where it remains till the end.
Angela Lansbury | Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney animated feature adapted for the Broadway stage, where it premiered in April 1994. The score, by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, was recognized with an Academy Award for Best Original Score, and the title song, featured here, won Best Original Song.
Angela Lansbury voiced Mrs. Potts for the film, and her universally acclaimed performance of the tune has since been enshrined in the minds of thousands of children who have watched the film. In 2004, the American Film Institute ranked “Beauty and the Beast” at number 62 on their list of the greatest songs in American Film History. Lansbury died today at the age of 96 after a remarkable eight decade career in film, television, and theater.
The key change comes at 1:21.
Unworthy of Your Love (from “Assassins”)
Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 musical Assassins depicts the inner lives of various real-life figures who tried (and sometimes succeeded) to assassinate the president of the United States, and the repercussions their actions had on themselves and the country and its history. “Unworthy of Your Love” is sung by John Hinckley to his fantasy girlfriend Jodie Foster; he is joined by partway through by Squeaky Fromme, who declares her love Charles Manson.
By Sondheim standards, the tune is a remarkably conventional love ballad. It begins in B, shifts down to A for Squeaky’s verse at 1:42, and returns to B for the final chorus at 2:57.
Deniece Williams | Let’s Hear It For the Boy
“Deniece Williams’ ‘Let’s Hear It For The Boy,’ … was a last-second addition to the Footloose soundtrack, (Stereogum) … Like Michael Sembello, another relatively anonymous artist who scored a #1 single by soundtracking a dance montage in an early-’80s blockbuster, Williams had gotten her start backing up Stevie Wonder … Williams recorded (the tune) with the producer George Duke, a jazz-fluent polymath who’d made records with Cannonball Adderly and Frank Zappa … (and) gives a whole lot of room to backup singers George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam, who would go on to form the duo Boy Meets Girl and peak at #5 with ‘Waiting For A Star To Fall.’
As a singer, Williams is pretty great at conveying the idea of pure, overwhelming happiness. She’s the reason why ‘Let’s Hear It For The Boy’ doesn’t carry the immediate threat of doom for this couple. When she sings about this boy, hopeless schlub though he may be, she sounds utterly transported with joy … Putting a gospel singer like Williams on a giddy dance-pop track like this is a smart decision. Whitney Houston, someone who will be in this column a ton of times, first became famous singing songs like that. After ‘Let’s Hear It For The Boy,’ Deniece Williams never came anywhere near the top 10 again. Instead, she pulled a reverse Whitney Houston: After spending years as a successful pop singer, she became a full-time gospel singer. She’s won four Grammys, all in gospel categories, and she seems plenty happy in that world.”
After a start in C major for the intro and the verse, the chorus pivots up to D major for the chorus (0:43). From 1:06 to 1:15, some instrumental connective tissue provides some space for the tune to sidestep back down into C. The pattern continues from there. From 3:07 and onward, Williams seems to have fun effervescing at the very high end of her four-octave range through the extended outro.
Gloria Gaynor | I Am What I Am
“‘I Am What I Am’, (Jerry Herman’s) signature anthem from La Cage aux Folles, is a song to be scaled whenever drink has been taken and identity totters: by a spangled diva in the spotlight, a club kid staking a claim, a bridesmaid clinging desperately to dignity,” (The Guardian).
“La Cage is a Feydeau farce with show tunes, pitting a cabaret queen against the moral majority, with a book by Harvey Fierstein (who later lent his gravel-pit register to the song on Broadway). When drag queen Albin is disinvited from his own son’s wedding, he refuses to shuffle out of the picture. One draft speech included the line, ‘I am what I am and there’s nothing I can do.’ Herman’s synapses rippled. ‘Hold everything,’ he exclaimed. ‘I want to take those five words, if you will give them to me … I can write you a first-act closer that will be a killer because I feel that emotion in me.’ The next morning, he gathered everyone in his 61st Street studio and sang through the mounting choruses. ‘The reaction was cataclysmic.’ … Away from the show, ‘I Am’ has been a lip-synch love bomb, of course it has … it provided the (2019) Pride theme for Belfast club Harland and Poof … It naturally slotted into Shirley Bassey’s repertoire – though the diva hardly struggles for self-belief – and attained disco fervour with Gloria Gaynor.”
Released in 1984, Gaynor’s version reached #82 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts. After a poised rubato intro, the tune kicks into its groove gear at 0:37. After a long instrumental break, there’s a whole-step key change at 3:26 — and then another unexpected upward half-step skip at 3:48. The groove isn’t quite 100% disco, but its 1984 release date was certainly past the heyday of the disco craze. Nonetheless, this track was a club-driven hit.
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