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Sondheim: "Merrily We Roll Along"

 The great gift of Bernadette Peters is to seem shredded by lost love; she conveys this feeling in her trio of sad songs, "Faithless Love," "Time Heals Everything," and "Not a Day Goes By."


Bernadette's rendition of "Not a Day Goes By" is definitive; she has made such a mark on this song, if you see a different version, you inevitably feel puzzled. ("Wait....where's Bernadette?") In this song, the speaker addresses an ex; the post-breakup wreckage is so bad, life has become hell. Sondheim's "run-on" syntax shows (rather than telling) what it is like to be trapped in a cycle of rumination:

I keep thinking, when does it end?
Where's the day I'll have started forgetting?
But I just go on thinking and sweating
And cursing and crying
And turning and reaching
And waking and dying....

People speak about Sondheim's love of puzzles; for example, why include the word "day" seven times in one sentence? It's because Sondheim is evoking thoughts of one week. This is a song about the passage of time; similarly, "Merrily," a time-obsessed show, includes seven major transitions. ("How did you get to be here? What was the moment?")

There is a nice sense of mounting rage throughout this solo. First, the speaker observes that "not a day goes by...not a single day...." But when she returns to this idea, her tone has become bitter and ironic: "Not a day goes by....not a blessed day...."

Just a few sentences--but it's difficult not to hang on every word.

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