Word: lyricisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Other improvements over "Whole Lotta Shakin' ": 1) Jerry Lee's pianistry was never so pertinently fortissimo. 2) The singing has a ferocious assurance, hitting preacher-like peaks. 3) And because the song is in the deranged-exclamatory mode - the lyric engorged with religio-carnal seizures ("You came along and mooooved me, honey!"), adolescent giddiness ("Kiss me, baby! Mmm-mm, feels good!"), desperate anticipation ("Hold me, baby! Well, I wants to love you like a lover should!") and obsessive-compulsive behavior ("I chew my nails and I twiddle my thumb!") - the comic intensity of JLL's glissandous vocal underlines, not undermines...
...joined by a foreground tapping (presumably the rim of the snare drum), as if someone is keeping time on the mike with his buck teeth. In the bridge, Jerry Lee's left hand rumbles menacingly up to the break, when four-note poundings heighten the melodrama of the lyric: "You're fine, so kind/ Got to tell this world that you're mine mine mine mine!" Back to the verse, with more rumblings and eruptions - "C'mon, baby, ya drive me crazy" - and on to the two instrumental sections...
...Rodgers and Hart collaborated once more: five new songs for a revival of their 1927 hit "A Connecticut Yankee." The last lyric Hart wrote was for "To Keep My Love Alive," sung by a noble lady of who tires easily of men - 15 husbands, 15 early funerals. "Sir Philip played the harp; I cussed the thing./ I crowned him with his harp to bust the thing./ And now he plays where harps are just the thing,/ To keep my love alive." Hart's blithe wickedness is indebted to Cole Porter's "list" songs like...
...Adele has a tweety soprano with no special warmth or color; maybe, those who saw her on Broadway might have said, you had to be there. What's beguiling about these early sides is Fred's attempt to find a style. The voice never grew, but his knowledge of lyric reading eventually did. (A few of the songs also have a chorus or two of Fred's tap dancing, which doesn't record well; to the great public outside New York, it sounded cold and clangorous, like late-night mischief in the back alley...
...Ginger will follow him - as a dancer, because in these movies to dance is to love - and how expertly she can keep up with him. Astaire's singing, Rogers' silent re-acting and the pair's dance coax each bit of drama and humor out of the lyric and music. What follows is my attempt to render complex emotions and glorious movement in prose; it's just the Cliff Notes to a blithe masterpiece. So rent or buy the "Top Hat" VHS. And get the album, "Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers at RKO," two CDs of great music and fabulous vibes...