I remember that waaaaaay back in my Junior High School years, we had to read the play, watch the film, and discuss “Life With Father” – and (it seemed to me) the primary focus of making us study that was to fully understand the need to “write what you know.” [As I grew into teaching theatre, that also morphed into “act what you know.”] If you haven’t experienced it – or something resembling it – you cannot accurately capture it in writing or portray it.
As I apply that to the theatrical songwriters I held as heroes, Cole Porter was a witty, social-climbing gay man in love with a woman who had a series of affairs and one-night (or one-afternoon) flings throughout their life together. When he writes of love, it is never a “simple” thing… It is complicated. It has dimensions. It often makes no logical sense but is deeply felt. Someone might be “easy to love,” but love is not easy!
So Porter’s lyrics have layer upon layer of joy and pain – compromise and temporary ecstasy – and both elements need to be present at all times when singing his words because, as Cole understood it, you can never have one without the other somehow combined.
Johnny Mercer was a southern gentleman, described as “the kindest man you’ll ever meet sober and the cruelest man you’ll ever meet drunk.”
Mercer wanted to be known as a great singer, and he had some success at that, but as his popularity faded, his success as a lyricist only increased. So, he was not what he wanted to be. He also was not married to the love of his life – he was married to his second choice because his first choice didn’t choose him… a constant source of pain & frustration.
So, in Mercer’s lyrics, you find great longing, regret, sometimes vengeance, and stoicism riding alongside his words of adoration and devotion.
Lorenz (Larry) Hart of “Rodgers & Hart” was a very short (4’11”) gay man who endured years of taunting in his youth and found wit/comedy a tool he could wield for protection and used alcohol as a way to cope with what he could only see as his failings. Never finding a successful personal relationship, he didn’t find Love “complicated” – he found it painful. His “I love you” songs are pretty bland – but his “I-love-you-but-can’t-have-you” songs are exquisite in their clarity.
Irving Berlin’s first wife died of typhoid five months after their wedding. His early songs are all very witty, with lots of word play. After her death, he writes passionate, committing love songs and songs about loss and survival with enormous depth.
Oscar Hammerstein was a kind, quiet, introspective guy whose mother died when he was 15. He chose to mourn while moving forward, believing in a light at the end of the tunnel. His lyrics seem eternally optimistic (particularly “Cockeyed Optimist”) and share what people choose to say, not what they think. Oscar’s lyrics are “surface” words – the truth in them is in what’s NOT being said…
In contrast, Oscar’s godson Stephen Sondheim wrote lyrics that express entirely a character’s internal thoughts in fine detail. Sondheim had a challenging relationship with his mother, with whom he is reported to have understood well but not gotten along. So if you are curious why he often wrote so well for unhappy, bitter middle-aged female characters….. well……
Ira Gershwin was the older brother of a musical genius. Unlike George, he found the woman of his dreams and had a successful, monogamous marriage until his death. Ira’s lyrics are clever, but mainly, they provide easy-to-remember words for his brother’s melodies.
His best songs focus on devoted, stable, treasured love. That’s what he knew; that’s what he could write.
As I look back on the bodies of work left by these extraordinary songwriters as the art form of The Popular/Theatrical American Song was being created, it is so clear to see that their great success was achieved when they wrote what they knew. What they created was unique to them because they were – as we all are – unique humans.
They all knew each other, were friends, and respected what each other could do. They revered the musical writers before them; they championed the younger writers coming up behind them.
They understood that what they were creating was capturing the times in which they lived…. A time that, like all times, would not be eternal. But if they did their jobs correctly, when humanity comes to look back on their times through their songs, it will be able to see the world that they were creating in…. Or at least the world they wanted to be seen…. (“don’t look at that, we don’t look good there – look at this.”)
For artists in particular, part of “the job” is to leave behind reflections of the times we’re in – the lessons we have learned during that time – examples of our attempts to solve our social problems, even if we’ve failed, so that as a species we can know what we’ve done and where we’ve been, so if we haven’t found the best ways to improve ourselves yet we can keep trying down unexplored paths.
For all humans, moving forward is THE option. But we can only do that by knowing where we are AND where we’ve been.
Factual history is essential. Without it, we will re-create things like The Spanish Inquisition and the Third Reich. But art history – all of art’s history – is also important (if not more so) because it is through our art that we document where we are so future humans will know where we’ve been.
Not all of the best “captures” of human emotion in music are songs that achieved massive popularity.
Some (many!) of the best songs are in danger of disappearing if they are not kept alive. A song is only alive when it is being heard.
Evidently, a significant portion of my purpose here is to do what I can to excavate and re-circulate music, and put forth my own literary voice from time to time.
