Not all song lyrics work as straight poems – many song lyrics need the music to get the message across, to tap into the emotion, whatever it is the purpose of the song is. I love Green Day’s “Holiday” but without that music it just doesn’t have the PUNCH that the song does. But some songs do work as poems. “Mr. Harris” by Aimee Mann (do NOT even get me started on that song.) Pretty much every Indigo Girls song works as poetry. “Galileo”? Totally. “Watershed.” Yes~!
The following song is one of my favorites. It really resonates for me at this moment in my life. sniff sniff. Also I love all of the internal rhymes. (“that you”, “statue”, etc.) It’s a perfect song. Kills me.
It’s “Bill” – from Showboat
Words by P.G. Wodehouse & Music by Jerome Kern
I used to dream that I would discover
The perfect lover
someday,
I knew I’d recognize him if ever
He came ’round my way.
I always used to fancy then
He’d be one of the God-like kind of men
With a giant brain and a noble head
Like the heroes bold
In the books I’ve read.
But along came Bill,
who’s not the type at all
You’d meet him on the street and never notice him;
His form and face, his manly grace
Are not the kind that you would find in a statue.
And I can’t explain,
It’s surely not his brain
That makes me thrill —
I love him because he’s wonderful,
Because he’s just my Bill.
He can’t play golf or tennis or polo,
Or sing a solo, or row.
He isn’t half as handsome
As dozens of men that I know.
He isn’t tall or straight or slim
And he dresses far worse than Ted or Jim.
And I can’t explain why he should be
Just the one, one man in the world for me.
He’s just my Bill, an ordinary man,
He hasn’t got a thing that I can brag about.
And yet to be
Upon his knee
So comfy and roomy
Seems natural to me.
Oh, I can’t explain,
It’s surely not his brain
That makes me thrill —
I love him because he’s — I don’t know…
Because he’s just my Bill.
Awesome. Thou rockest.
“He isn’t half as handsome / As dozens of men that I know”
(like, uhm, Donald)
Wodehouse is so awesome, and I only discovered him recently.
There was a character in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon called Wodehouse. He’s an American, in the intelligence service in WWII. In one scene he’s in Britain in a meeting and everyone is going around the table giving information and we’re inside the character’s mind as he’s parsing all the information and he’s talking about how the meeting leader keeps saying, “Woe to Hice.” And he’s thinking, wow, he keeps saying that, I’d sure hate to be that Hice guy. And it turns out they were calling on him to throw in his two cents, but he didn’t understand because of the different pronounciation.
It’s a memorable scene and it’s what I think of every time I see P.G. Wodehouse’s name anywhere.
amelie – HAHAHAHAHA
sheila,
is it horrible that i’ve been waiting to use that one ever since that post in September?
bless you for remembering, and glad you enjoyed ^_^.
also, thanks for posting some P. G. Wodehouse. i’m a Jeeves and Wooster fan, so this made my day.
Good old Plum. I highly recommend BRING ON THE GIRLS: The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy with Pictures to Prove It by P.G. Wodehouse and his partner Guy Bolton. What a gem for all theater-loving folk, particularly the time when the two young semi-nobodies (Wodehouse and Bolton) somehow landed two Ziegfeld Follies girls, 18-year-old Marion Davies and 19-year-old Justine Johnson, to be in their show, Oh, Boy!. That’s not me saying Oh, Boy! That was the name of the show.
sheil..one of my absolute fave songs!!!! Lonette McKee does such and awesome version on the last revival of Showboat.
Mitchell – It’s a definitive version of the song … she makes it into this private moment monologue … the way she pauses before saying “I don’t know” … and then her tone of confusion – when she says, “I don’t know …:” it’s so real!!
goosebumps!!
exactly..she doesnt work enuf..she’s sooo good!