I'm still on it.

[velvetpage]

My mid-20th-century music kick, that is. I think I've been on it since Christmas, more or less. It comes and goes.

The other day in my mom's pool, my stepdad and I were discussing the movie South Pacific, which we watched a while ago and really enjoyed. I tried, with very little success, to call into my head the waltz from that movie. I could see the female lead singing it. I could hear Julie Andrews' voice singing it (I have it on a CD with her.) I could pull up random lines from it (high as a flag on the fourth of July, if you'll excuse an expression I use, I'm in love. . .) But I could not for the life of me come up with the entire song.

This is unusual for me. Normally, I will come up with one lyric, and be able to simply pick up the song from there and keep going, singing it in a loop. The one line should have been enough to trigger the memory so I could sing the whole thing. But it wasn't, the the words didn't come.

So today I pulled out the aforementioned Julie Andrews CD and listened to it. Now I've got it running through my head in a medley of Richard Rodgers tunes, with the Carousel waltz providing background flavour.

I wonder when songwriters decided that good poetry wasn't necessary for a good song? The lyrics of these old tunes stick with me in a way modern lyrics very rarely do. Is it simply that, with fewer methods of recording and a smaller industry, only good stuff got produced? Is it that only the good stuff has survived for me to hear it, long after the composers are dead? Or are more people really writing awful stuff now than ever before?

I don't know, and I'd rather go back to listening to Julie Andrews than ponder it.

Elizabeth likes waltzing around the living room with Mommy, while Mommy sings, "I'm in love I'm in love I'm in love I'm in love, I'm in love with a wonderful guy!" at the top of her lungs. It's just a part of the fact that her Mommy is crazy and she loves it. :)

Comments

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I know there probably is - I just haven't listened to the radio much lately, having been on a Cole Porter/Richard Rodgers/Gershwin kick for months on end. :)