On The Bookshelf

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"Reading Lyrics" packs some of the most
unforgettable words written by American
and British lyricists into one volume.

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W

hat passes for lyrics today
is discouraging at best
and embarrassing at
worst. From Eminem s
trashy patter to Jewel's saccharine
twaddle to Broadway drivel like Rent,
good, clever lyrics seem to have gone
the way of the eight-track tape.
Certainly, there are exceptions. No
one today can hold a candle to
Stephen Sondheim's diamond-bright
balletic wordplay. Even at 71,
Sondheim's muse is as coruscating as
ever. But for the most part, lyric writ-
ing is in grave trouble. Poor Cole
Porter would get no kick out of this
sorry situation.
But while lamenting the present,
it's possible to celebrate the past, as
editors Robert Gottlieb and Robert
Kimball have done in their wide-
ranging and largely commendable
Reading Lyrics (Pantheon Books;
$39.50), a collection of more than
1,000 complete lyrics to songs cov-
ering 1900-1975.

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1

01 ALATUTI1

S
ll

'

Not merely a nod to nostalgia, the
book is a salute to the timelessness of
these lyrics and the 180 men and
women who wrote them. Lyricists,
after all, often fade into the back-
ground behind the composers who
write the music and the performers
who perform the songs.
The editors acknowledge that
including some lyrics and omitting
others will no doubt irk readers. Still,
it's unfathomable why they would
include Sondheim's puerile "Together
Wherever We Go" (a creative ebb for
the composer-lyricist), and omit
"Liaisons" from the 1973 musical A
Little Night Music, where Sondheim
smartly rhymes "position" with
"Titian" and "touchy" with "duchy."
And while you have to applaud the
editors for including much of Ira
Gershwin's oeuvre, especially when it's
paired with his brother George's
music, you won't find the lyrics to "I
Can't Get Started," one of Ira's finest
lyrics, set to the music of the underrat-
ed Vernon Duke.
Many of Sheldon Harnick's lyrics
to the evergreen Fiddler on the Roof

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4

From Gus Kahn,
Irving Berlin,
Lorenz Hart, E. Y
(Yip) Harburg,
Ira Gershwin
and Oscar
Hammerstein II to
Dorothy Fields,
Frank Loesser,
Sammy Cahn,
Alan Jay Lerner,
Sheldon Harnick,
Stephen Sondheim
and Fred Ebb,
Jewish lyricists play
of this
a large part
gathering of words.

HOBERT GOTTLIEB AND OBERT KIMBALL

3/30
2001

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