Word: tune
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...Alexander's Ragtime Band," 1911. It was a march, not a rag, and its savviest musicality comprised quotes from a bugle call and "Swanee River." But the tune, which revived the ragtime fervor that Scott Joplin had stoked a decade earlier, made Berlin a songwriting star. On its first release, four versions of the tune charted at #1, #2, #3 and #4. Bessie Smith, in 1927, and Louis Armstrong, in 1937, made the top 20 with their interpretations. In 1938 the song was #1 again, in a duet by Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell; another Crosby duet, this time with...
...course, lyrics are naked on a page; if you don't know the tune and the setting for, say, "Anything You Can Do" from "Annie Get Your Gun," the words won't make it sing ("Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you. No you can't. Yes I can. No you can't. Yes I can. No you can't. Yes I can, yes I can!" Huh?) But the book makes the best case for what showbiz historian Ethan Mordden has described as a "casual timelessness" of Berlin's songs...
...Play a Simple Melody," or "Simple Melody/Musical Demon," 1914. This was Berlin's first contrapuntal tune: two melodies - one demure, one robust - that are sung consecutively, then one atop the other. (He did it again with "I Wonder Why/You?re Just in Love" for "Call Me Madam"). It was the biggest hit of his first Broadway score, "Watch Your Step," and spawned hit versions that reached #4 and #8. In 1950 the song did a Lazarus, or would have if he?d been a barbershop quartet. This time there were four hits, including Bing and Gary Crosby...
...Piggies and the gorgeous Here Comes the Sun and Something. With more than 150 versions recorded, Something is the second-most-covered Beatles song after Yesterday, but a measure of Harrison's obscurity within the band is that Frank Sinatra used to introduce Something as his favorite Lennon-McCartney tune...
...Democrats lost this fight only last year, to the tune of a heavily Bush-leaning $1.3 trillion compromise - and the appetite of people for tax cuts doesn't go generally down when times are tough. But remember, that tax cut got through largely on the wiggle room provided by those monster budget surpluses, and that rationalization - that America could have it all ways - is all gone. Daschle needn't even hit too hard on the tax bill that, after all, 10 of his compatriots helped pass - all he's got to say is that the surpluses are gone (ahem...