by Ben Yagoda
*More than fifty years later, Frishberg still remembered Loesser’s lyric-writing advice: “He told me that my job as a lyric writer was to grab the listener by the ear and don’t let him go. My job was to write a song so that the listener wouldn’t be distracted or puzzled. My job is to not let that listener go. He said, ‘Make every statement in the lyrics that you’re using refer to the concept that’s in the title. Don’t leave the listener hanging. Keep the listener interested and surprised. If you use colorful language, give the listener a pause, so he can appreciate it and be ready for your next thought. And when you pull off something flashy that you want the listener to remember, to be impressed by, that’s when you put in a riff, a couple of bars, a riff. Don’t pile climaxes or punchlines right next to each other.’”
*It may be relevant that Leigh’s father died, of a heart ailment, two years after her hospital visit that inspired “Young at Heart.”
*The adjective “teenage,” to refer to someone between thirteen and nineteen, was first noted by the journal American Speech in 1935, and the Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation for the noun “teenager” is 1941. But both terms took off in the 1950s. During that decade, according to Google Books, their use in American printed sources rose by roughly 600 percent.
*Hitchcock called on the team to write a theme song for his 1958 Vertigo. Jay recounted years later: “Paramount had told him that people don’t know what ‘vertigo’ means and he wanted us to pacify them by explaining the meaning of ‘vertigo’ in our lyric.” Ever the efficient craftsmen, they wrote the song, with a slight calypso beat and this lyrical opening: “Down to the depths, up to the heights, / Giddy with joy, crazy with fear, these are my nights.” After a session that resulted in a demo recording, Jay said, “I decided to test out lyrics to see if [Ray] had explained the meaning of the word, ‘vertigo.’ Now the singer had rehearsed it about six times by this time, and I asked him if he knew what ‘vertigo’ means? And he said, ‘It’s an island in the West Indies, isn’t it?’” Although Hitchcock and Paramount wisely decided not to use the song, one recording of it was released, by singer Billy Eckstine.
*“Short Shorts” was a novelty song by a New Jersey teenage group called the Royal Teens. It was written by their keyboardist, Bob Gaudio, who would go on to be a member of and write most of the songs for the Four Seasons. “Raunchy” was a 1957 instrumental rock-and-roll hit for Bill Justis. George Harrison played the song at his audition for a group that would be called the Beatles.
*The songs, in order, are: “In My Life” (1965); “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (1965); “Over the Rainbow” (1939); “Here, There and Everywhere” (1966); “The Tracks of My Tears” (1965); “The Times They Are A-Changing” (1963): “Strange Fruit” (1939); “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (a song recorded by Bonnie Raitt in 1991); “People Get Ready” (1965); and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” (1964).
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