What makes a Sondheim song a Sondheim song? “Less is more.” “Form dictates content.” “God is in the details.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5n-o80EX30
We see the stripped-down trend in the opening of “Sooner or Later,” for which Sondheim won his Oscar:
Sooner or later you’re gonna be mine
Sooner or later you’re gonna be fine
Baby, it’s time that you faced it
I always get my man
These simple declarations might make us think of Sondheim’s gold standard, “Porgy and Bess.” “Summertime, and the livin’s easy. Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high.” “Bess, you is my woman now. You is. You is.” We also spot smart details, which are sprinkled throughout and unostentatious; the writer is not letting you see his sweat. Though he is writing in 1990, he wants you to think of an earlier era, so he borrows language (and an idea) from “Whatever Lola Wants” (“Damn Yankees”). The female lead as femme fatale--stalking her “man” as a hunter stalks prey. The casualness of “gonna,” “sooner or later,” and “baby”--All of this is deliberate.
Repetition--with slight variations--keeps things interesting. “Baby” recurs and recurs; it starts lines, then it ends them (as “babe”). Sondheim amuses himself with internal rhyme (“insist, babe,” “resist, babe,” “kissed, babe,” “delights me,” “excites me,” “fights me”). Like Cole Porter, Sondheim plays a kind of game with himself: How much can I wring from one word, or even one sound? “Matter, platter, chatter.” “When, yen, then, amen, ten.” (I think of “You’re the Top”: “At words poetic I’m so pathetic that I always have found it best--instead of getting them off my chest--to let them rest, unexpressed.”) Meanwhile, the speaker is being a tease: She proposes a “bones-jumping” right here and now, only to retreat, to suggest that she’ll wait for a riper moment (and even then, she’ll continue to tantalize. When she gets a yen, she’ll actually withhold even more; she’ll count to ten. These rhymes stretch out the build-up to the climax; form underlines content; Sondheim actually replicates the sensation of a “cock tease” through this deliberately drawn-out and playful series of jokes. All planned--and sort of sexy.)
Then: the orgasm. A word appears, and it hasn’t appeared elsewhere in the song. It’s “love.” (This is like Catholics banning themselves from saying “Hallelujah” all through Lent--and then the payoff arrives on Easter.) Sondheim always ends with a twist. The final moment in “Good Thing Going” introduces the word “gone”: “We had a good thing going, going, gone.” The final moment of “Trumpets" makes the implicit explicit: “There won’t be trumpets. There are no trumpets. Who needs trumpets?" Here, at the end of his Oscar song, Sondheim finally reveals what he has not revealed in his verses: The speaker doesn’t just want sex. She wants a commitment. “This time I’m not only getting--I’m holding--my man.” “Love”--formerly absent from the song--suddenly pops up three times: “I’m gonna love you like nothing you’ve known; I’m gonna love you, and you all alone; Sooner is better than later, but, lover, I’ll hover, I’ll plan.” Small twists--all by design. This guy makes it look easy.
I write all of this because Andrew Rannells will do “Sooner or Later” tonight--at 9 PM--among other songs. Live from Lincoln Center. PBS. Tune in!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5n-o80EX30
We see the stripped-down trend in the opening of “Sooner or Later,” for which Sondheim won his Oscar:
Sooner or later you’re gonna be mine
Sooner or later you’re gonna be fine
Baby, it’s time that you faced it
I always get my man
These simple declarations might make us think of Sondheim’s gold standard, “Porgy and Bess.” “Summertime, and the livin’s easy. Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high.” “Bess, you is my woman now. You is. You is.” We also spot smart details, which are sprinkled throughout and unostentatious; the writer is not letting you see his sweat. Though he is writing in 1990, he wants you to think of an earlier era, so he borrows language (and an idea) from “Whatever Lola Wants” (“Damn Yankees”). The female lead as femme fatale--stalking her “man” as a hunter stalks prey. The casualness of “gonna,” “sooner or later,” and “baby”--All of this is deliberate.
Repetition--with slight variations--keeps things interesting. “Baby” recurs and recurs; it starts lines, then it ends them (as “babe”). Sondheim amuses himself with internal rhyme (“insist, babe,” “resist, babe,” “kissed, babe,” “delights me,” “excites me,” “fights me”). Like Cole Porter, Sondheim plays a kind of game with himself: How much can I wring from one word, or even one sound? “Matter, platter, chatter.” “When, yen, then, amen, ten.” (I think of “You’re the Top”: “At words poetic I’m so pathetic that I always have found it best--instead of getting them off my chest--to let them rest, unexpressed.”) Meanwhile, the speaker is being a tease: She proposes a “bones-jumping” right here and now, only to retreat, to suggest that she’ll wait for a riper moment (and even then, she’ll continue to tantalize. When she gets a yen, she’ll actually withhold even more; she’ll count to ten. These rhymes stretch out the build-up to the climax; form underlines content; Sondheim actually replicates the sensation of a “cock tease” through this deliberately drawn-out and playful series of jokes. All planned--and sort of sexy.)
Then: the orgasm. A word appears, and it hasn’t appeared elsewhere in the song. It’s “love.” (This is like Catholics banning themselves from saying “Hallelujah” all through Lent--and then the payoff arrives on Easter.) Sondheim always ends with a twist. The final moment in “Good Thing Going” introduces the word “gone”: “We had a good thing going, going, gone.” The final moment of “Trumpets" makes the implicit explicit: “There won’t be trumpets. There are no trumpets. Who needs trumpets?" Here, at the end of his Oscar song, Sondheim finally reveals what he has not revealed in his verses: The speaker doesn’t just want sex. She wants a commitment. “This time I’m not only getting--I’m holding--my man.” “Love”--formerly absent from the song--suddenly pops up three times: “I’m gonna love you like nothing you’ve known; I’m gonna love you, and you all alone; Sooner is better than later, but, lover, I’ll hover, I’ll plan.” Small twists--all by design. This guy makes it look easy.
I write all of this because Andrew Rannells will do “Sooner or Later” tonight--at 9 PM--among other songs. Live from Lincoln Center. PBS. Tune in!
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