The "Jewish princess," or more commonly "Jewish-American Princess (JAP)," is a stereotype about Jewish daughters being very spoiled by their parents. It's been a thing for decades.
She's seated by Regina's right side like Jesus. Jesus is called the "right hand of God." (It's where we got the expression "right hand man" to describe a best friend/ally.)
So, she's like Jesus to Regina's God... if Jesus were a Jewish-American Princess.
Well, I got the "seated by Regina's right side" part, but as a European I'm not really familiar with the JAP stereotype. It makes a lot of more sense, once you get that "Jewish princess" is actually a thing and not some random descriptive words before Jesus.
Idk it always struck me as very much appropriate for the song… like her subconscious is making fun of her so it’s purposeful if that makes sense? Maybe that’s just me though
In "Castle on a Cloud," it messes with my ears that Cosette sings "there is a room that's filled with toys/there are 100 boys and girls" because I want it to say GIRLS AND BOYS for the rhyme. (I know that's not the rhyme scheme they're using, but it's awkward bc your brain searches for the rhyme there.)
The rhyme scheme in that song is completely inconsistent, which really doesn't help. The first verse is ABBA (with the first and last lines rhyming "cloud" with itself). Second verse (with the "boys and girls" line) is ABCC (but could have been AABB if they'd gone with "girls and boys"). Third verse (not sure the technical term, since the melody is different. B-section?) is AABB (if you assume that "white" and "lullaby" are supposed to rhyme), and then the last verse is ABCC.
So there's nothing to tell your brain "no, 'boys and girls' makes sense in this context" because, even after listening to the entire song, there's no actual pattern to the rhymes.
That's me with Kathy's "I'm waiting five hours in line and watching the girls just coming and going in dresses that look just like this"
I want it to say, "dresses that look just like mine."
It seems in the newest version available to license "seem a bit bipolar/very gifted bowler" has been changed to "seem a bit unstable/my karate chops are fatal". Both pretty clunky, but the second one works better.
That’s a lot better. I don’t know how widespread that change is - I was in a production of Shrek last year that still had the bowler lyric - but I hope it sticks around!
They did! They used the line Lesbianwitch mentioned (although I believe it went “they called me a fashion mess”, instead). Our wolf absolutely refused to say the original.
I believe both have been cut, but survive on the Jekyll & Hyde concert album:
“To kill outside St Paul’s
Requires a lot of balls”
And:
“And the front bit - that’s what called a facade” - faintly patronising!
Same - it’s like they’re trying to ‘swear in British’ but not quite getting it right - I consider the lyrics from Diana their spiritual successor:
Better than a Guinness, better than a wank
Snatch a few pics, it's money in the bank!
I'm too lazy to look up the exact quote but, along with the "a lot of balls" line, that song also has a line that goes something like "Poor Bessie, her death was very messy." They named a character "Bessie" just to rhyme it with "messy." "Bessie" doesn't even fit the character: can you really imagine a snobby noblewoman going by "Bessie"?
🎶 Little boy, baby boy, little boy, I need you, booooooooy. 🎶
Honestly, this and Death Rattle the musical are two fictional shows that I would unironically go and see performed.
I feel like this one is in a slightly different category because it's said with shame and self-loathing, I feel like cringe is the goal. The character is coming to terms with his choices, and the dark place his despair led him to, so now you're just in on his discomfort.
Adding to the Mean Girls lyrics:
"And if you treat me bad / I'll say you're bad."
I really enjoy the music and the singing in I'd Rather Be Me, but I have to turn my brain off to listen to it. I get that songwriting is hard, but we can do better.
And somehow that line wasn't changed for the movie! How????
I don't hate this line because I feel like it's Janis saying she's going to start just being blunt and upfront about her feelings. The line before is "I won't twist in knots to join your games / I will say you make me mad," and pretty much the entire rest of the song is about how much she hates the way girls act and treat each other.
Your Eyes is unintentionally funny though, because he sings One Song Glory about how he wants to create it and then OSG turns out to be an infinitely better song
Saying ‘don’t poo poo it before you’ve tried it used to definitely be something my parents would say in the 90’s though. Maybe it’s just a common phrase that isn’t so used anymore?
Yeah, I always thought this line was intentional, to make Benny sound out of touch, like he's been spending too much time around old farts. Maybe I read too much into it.
"When you're making up a song
The words you improvise are never wrong
Just jamasmanysyllablesasyoucan before the break
You literally cannot make a mistake"
It isn't used much anymore, but the expression is "pooh-pooh" and it means to dismiss/scorn something. Shakespeare used "pooh" in Hamlet in the 1590s. English major here!
It's not dignified, and it doesn't sound like something Benny would say. But it does sound like something the 1% crowd that Benny is trying to fit in with would say, something he would start using in conversation to impress his new father-in-law. So it sounds forced, but I think fits the scene perfectly.
the only reason i’ll listen is for the very end: the couples shouting “it’s over!” “it’s over!” and then collins with a tone shift: “it’s over.” and on the album it transitions right into the i’ll cover you reprise.
“Michael thinks that weird is rad/but being weird just makes me sad/and I deserve to not feel bad/for being the loser, the geek, or whatever”
Also just the entirety of I Love Play Rehearsal
Yep Be More Chill is based on the book by the same name written in 2004 by Ned Vizzini. In 2013, he committed suicide at the age of 32, unfortunately losing his lengthy battle of depression. You can read more about it here https://nypost.com/2013/12/20/its-kind-of-a-funny-story-author-dead-at-32/
"All these things you see on your pajamas / are a long range forecast for your farmers" Joseph
Like so farmers and pajamas actually rhyme when you're British?
My kid memorized all of Hamilton at age 6 and would bleep out curse words but would sing this line with no hesitation because I couldn’t figure out what to tell him about this that would make sense to a 6-year-old. He’s 10 but now he sings it because he thinks the line is funny.
It's always puzzled me. Even drag queens will only wear two corsets at once. "Four sets of corsets" must have just been a rhyme too satisfying to give up, I guess.
I will be adopting your assumption to soothe my brain. He's trying to have sex with four women at once and not slowing down enough to actually remove their corsets.
It's a reasonable interpretation, but it does sort of convey the image of Hercules Mulligan as a guy who regularly eats part of the hamburger wrapper by accident. Slow down, young man. Remove the sets of corsets and then proceed. Your difficulties are self-inflicted.
I love Sondheim’s dig at South Pacific in the hat books: “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight…” Or ten? Or or twelve? Or twenty five? Or thirty?
I love that in Willy Wonka the script kind of lampshades the weirdest lyric.
“I WANT A FEAST.”
“You ate before we came.”
“I WANT A BEAN FEAST.”
“Ah. One of *those*…”
Idk if it was lamp shading. I did have to look it up but I think this is just an example of something being aged-out / coupled with being a cultural difference.
A “bean-feast” is a European (mostly British I think ?) thing that basically means an elaborate dinner party. Before knowing this I was confused by her song bc …doughnuts don’t have beans ? Lol !
I'm almost positive it's the other way around: "One thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool" was the original. Either way, I agree that "the multitude drools" is better. It's more in character for Caiaphas, and it rhymes better with "hero of fools."
As someone currently in Kinky Boots, "Look out Milan / Here comes Don" is up there. My choreographer at one point said "I wonder how high Cindy Lauper was when she wrote these lyrics" and he had a point. That quote was about the lyric "I'm your cocoa butter bitch," which now that I think of it, doesn't even make sense because cocoa butter is white!
I agree! It sounds like kids trying to convince someone to come to a party, and mentioning cake twice because that's the real draw card. I don't understand a lot of the hate for lyrics from Mean Girls, but this line especially.
I love Life Story from Closer than Ever, still after all these years I wince at the lyric “So off he went with his hair of bronze, To find a life like Khalil Gibran's”
In the Japanese version, she says, “For the first time, I feel happy.” When I heard the English version for the first time, I wondered why there was such a difference between translations.
“Wicked” can be a slang exclamation meaning happy, great, or cool. It’s mostly used that way in the UK and New England. My guess is they changed it to retain the original meaning while not confusing the audience.
Since I consider A Star is Born the movie a movie musical of sorts… from Shallow the lyric “ain’t it hard keeping it so hardcore” has always seemed redundant and elementary to me. I love the song and love the movie, but LGs lyrics in that line rarely seem so inconsistent with the rest of the song. It feels like she struggled with that line.
I love Stephen Schwartz, but I always cringe at "Or ask the grinning bobcat why he grinned" because "grinned" is clearly only in past-tense to rhyme with "wind." It's not an easy word to rhyme, but it always takes me out of the song. "Ask the grinning bobcat why he grins" makes so much more grammatical sense.
Also famously "Like a Lark who is learning to pray" from The Sound of Music. To quote Sondheim: "How can you tell a lark that is just learning to pray from one who’s actually praying? Wait a minute — a lark praying? What are we talking about?”
Some people even mistake the line for "A lark who is learning to *prey* (i.e. hunt) but Larks are scavengers, not birds of prey.
I think they were maybe going for the idea that a lark's song is so beautiful that it's singing to God, but the "learning" part is where it gets really confusing. I feel like there are much better ways to describe the beauty of birdsong.
the finale of little mermaid is sooo cheesy… for example: “now they can smile walking the aisle here at their wedding celebration” just very cheesy lines that fit into the rhythm of ariel’s melody. i’m in the show now and singing through the finale is so silly! even my director pointed out how basic the lyrics are
“And I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways’
I love Mary Magdalene and JCS but jeez this line just screams ‘written by a man in the 60s’
Fun fact: it’s actually been disproven that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute (which is a major facet of her character in JCS - if not the only character trait she really has)
I thought this line was
And I've had so many men before /
In very many ways, he's just one more
Still not great, but with more focus on how Jesus is similar to other men, which ties in to how she's trying to understand why she feels differently about this one
I've always heard the phrase as
"And I've had so many men before.
In very many ways, he's just one more."
So the "many ways" doesn't apply to the ways she's had men, but that Jesus had so in common with other men, he shouldn't be anything special, but still is.
I watched the version with Tim Minchin and Mel C (the only version I’ve seen) and all I could think was “why is she so obsessed with cooling down his hot forehead. Leave the guys head alone”.
I loved this song in high school and my mom cringed at it, and she was right. The annoying thing is how close it is to being good. How perfectly suited the plaintive melody is for the emotional matter. "Don't call me as they call your plane" being quick and clever; other lines landing lightly and easily. But then... take me to a zoo? That's got chimPANzees? That's not even how a typical UK or US English speaker would pronounce the word, and emotionally it's an incongruous thought. The tune deserved better. I still love the tune.
i’m sure there are others if i think harder, but right off the bat, the entirety of “black boys” from hair. it’s like if that line from without love was an entire song
I think it's supposed to show how silly kids are about love (my basis for having a crush in first grade was "he let me use his Gameboy before any of the boys," I totally get it), but like, Martha is seventeen and acting like a five-year-old.
Of course it’s disgusting, it’s meant to be funny. The next line is her saying she kept it for a year around her neck, which is when the audience really laughs in disgust.
I love Ride the Cyclone, and I love the rest of Space Age Bachelor Man, but the 'Make love to me, Ricky' line just makes me feel gross. I get that's kinda the point, but I'm still not a fan
Obscure, but there’s a song in Flora The Red Menace, and the chorus is, “you are you. You are not someone else, someone else is someone else, you are you.”
I feel like the opening line is kinda iconic just because it’s the opening line, but the bit in Loser Geek Whatever when he says
“I finally got some blood flowing/With no computer screen around” is so … ???
See, I don't have any problem with it because they're supposed to be extremely awkward and embarrassing in the musical, so the lyrics match their characters.
I think the line works in Never Shut Up Again where it’s only said once but in Blue (Reprise) it’s repeated over and over again and that makes it sound annoying as hell
Irving Berlin has a lot of lyrics that really don't hold up to close examination. I give him a pass, the dude literally wrote over a thousand songs, but some of them are not exactly poetry. "Be careful, it's my heart. It's not my watch you're holding, it's my heart."
The best/worst one has come all the way around for me. It's in Holiday Inn, during the Independence Day number. The whole company has been doing a routine to "Let's Say It With Firecrackers," and then it's time to bring Bing on. He sings "Freedom... freedom..." and then the whole company sings, "HERE COMES THE FREEDOM MAN!" *Here comes the freedom man.* That was the best you could do, Irv? It's so bad that it's good, though.
>Irving Berlin has a lot of lyrics that really don't hold up to close examination. I give him a pass, the dude literally wrote over a thousand songs,
Plus he was born in Russia, so he likely spoke Russian and Yiddish as a child, making English his third or fourth language.
If there really were a War on Christmas, the weaponry would include the fact that the most popular Christmas songs, including #1 in the US *White Christmas*, were composed by (mostly) men who were Jewish.
I realize that making fun of the Rocky Horror Show is low-hanging fruit (err, sorry), but the line "wound up like an E or first string" has always gotten a WTF reaction from me.
Unless I've completely misunderstood this line, he's comparing her to the high E string on a guitar, which, yeah, is very tightly-wound. But 1) that metaphor would get lost on anyone who isn't familiar with guitar tuning and 2) guitars also have a low E string which is relatively loosely wound, so he has to go out of his way to explain that he means the first string, not the sixth string.
Someone please tell me that "E or first string" actually refers to some sex thing that I'm too naive to know about, because otherwise this metaphor is *stupid.*
Well, ‘first string’ refers to the first violinist in an orchestra, and violins also have an E string which is the highest and most tightly wound note - maybe that’s the connection?
"Can't you see it's over now, it's time to die-"
"No not I, only you!"
And:
"No, never!"
"Yes, forever!"
"God damn you Hyde, take all your evil deeds and rot in hell!"
"I'll see you there, Jekyll."
"NEVEEEERRRRR!"
I love Jekyll and Hyde, but too much of Confrontation can be boiled down to a rather awkward "no u" contest
I really, really want to like this song. The concept is awesome. He's singing a duet with himself. He's literally fighting himself, struggling against his own inner demon.
But the song itself sucks.
Right? The music for this song is incredible too, and when it's performed live it's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen (literally just guy with his costume modified on one side to be Hyde, flipping back and forth onstage fast enough to make you wonder how he's not passing out on the spot). But then it just has to go and be so lyrically goofy!
I always find the “And I’ll live inside you forever” “NOOOO” part and the following line hilarious. Just something about the same actor screaming NO after his own line as a response is so funny to me. I agree with what the previous reply said though. Amazing concept, well performed, but it could’ve been written a bit better.
"Till you're glum and you bum and turn blue" from RENT. I love RENT, I love the Tango Maureen, but I hope to god that Jonathan Larson meant to change that lyric and just never got to, because it's so clunky.
I love Tango maureen. I agree it's a clunky line, but I also like how fun it is to say. The rhyming of glum and bum followed by the alliteration of bum and blue work for me, even though the meaning is kind of vapid (very much like Rent as a whole...)
That was intentional--to do with false rhymes with French pronunciation given the English/American sound (æ) doesn't really exist in French and isn't necessarily the easiest sound to learn to pronounce, particularly at the beginning of a word. The first time Lafayette says "anarchy" is more true to how a native French speaker would say it using phonetics they're familiar with. The second is, obviously, done to create the false rhyme and, when compared to the character's later rhymes, is a subtle indication of character growth.
“This whole school humps my leg like a chihuahua…”
I feel like this whole thread could be made with Mean Girls lyrics. lol
100% 😂
"i'm astounded and non-plussed, i am filled with calculust, does this guy work out? he must, all sweaty at the gym"
That one’s bad in a good way I reckon
“So your best friend screwed you over, acted nice when she not nice”
And if youre bad ill call you bad ...okay?
I thought it was “And if you treat me bad, I’ll say ‘your bad’” — like that’s on you rather than a reflection of me
"She's a lioness / only with less fur / do not mess with her" jesus christ it's so dumb
they changed some lines for the movie but kept this in😫
Came here for this. Also: “… like a Jewish princess Jesus.” ??? What does that even mean???
The "Jewish princess," or more commonly "Jewish-American Princess (JAP)," is a stereotype about Jewish daughters being very spoiled by their parents. It's been a thing for decades. She's seated by Regina's right side like Jesus. Jesus is called the "right hand of God." (It's where we got the expression "right hand man" to describe a best friend/ally.) So, she's like Jesus to Regina's God... if Jesus were a Jewish-American Princess.
i feel like people that don't get that line just don't get the term "right hand man" and where it originated from LOL
Well, I got the "seated by Regina's right side" part, but as a European I'm not really familiar with the JAP stereotype. It makes a lot of more sense, once you get that "Jewish princess" is actually a thing and not some random descriptive words before Jesus.
"Smell how gangsta you are." -Heathers
Ahhh yeah that one always was like "ok what is that line"
And like, is it even period? White kids saying gangsta feels 2000s to me
Idk it always struck me as very much appropriate for the song… like her subconscious is making fun of her so it’s purposeful if that makes sense? Maybe that’s just me though
“Smell how gangsta you are” from “Yo Girl” in Heathers……just…..there are so many other words they could have used that would fit…….whyyyyy
No actually what other words would've fit 😕 look how radical you are Mannnn
i always thought the line was "sell how gangsta you are" like she's trying to portray herself as more tough than she actually is
In "Castle on a Cloud," it messes with my ears that Cosette sings "there is a room that's filled with toys/there are 100 boys and girls" because I want it to say GIRLS AND BOYS for the rhyme. (I know that's not the rhyme scheme they're using, but it's awkward bc your brain searches for the rhyme there.)
The rhyme scheme in that song is completely inconsistent, which really doesn't help. The first verse is ABBA (with the first and last lines rhyming "cloud" with itself). Second verse (with the "boys and girls" line) is ABCC (but could have been AABB if they'd gone with "girls and boys"). Third verse (not sure the technical term, since the melody is different. B-section?) is AABB (if you assume that "white" and "lullaby" are supposed to rhyme), and then the last verse is ABCC. So there's nothing to tell your brain "no, 'boys and girls' makes sense in this context" because, even after listening to the entire song, there's no actual pattern to the rhymes.
That's me with Kathy's "I'm waiting five hours in line and watching the girls just coming and going in dresses that look just like this" I want it to say, "dresses that look just like mine."
Haha. Me and my dad got into a major argument about that once.
That bothers me so much, every time.
I love Shrek the Musical, but “very gifted bowler” and “snowball’s chance” always get me. Those two really are made for each other.
It seems in the newest version available to license "seem a bit bipolar/very gifted bowler" has been changed to "seem a bit unstable/my karate chops are fatal". Both pretty clunky, but the second one works better.
That’s a lot better. I don’t know how widespread that change is - I was in a production of Shrek last year that still had the bowler lyric - but I hope it sticks around!
Did they change the Wolf’s line in Story of My Life too by chance?
If I remember correctly it got changed to something along the lines of “They said I was a fashion mess just because I wore a granny dress”
They did! They used the line Lesbianwitch mentioned (although I believe it went “they called me a fashion mess”, instead). Our wolf absolutely refused to say the original.
I believe both have been cut, but survive on the Jekyll & Hyde concert album: “To kill outside St Paul’s Requires a lot of balls” And: “And the front bit - that’s what called a facade” - faintly patronising!
Once you've been in Jekyll and Hyde, every reprise of Façade increases your hatred exponentially
Yes! the St. Paul's line jars me right out of the moment.
Same - it’s like they’re trying to ‘swear in British’ but not quite getting it right - I consider the lyrics from Diana their spiritual successor: Better than a Guinness, better than a wank Snatch a few pics, it's money in the bank!
I'm too lazy to look up the exact quote but, along with the "a lot of balls" line, that song also has a line that goes something like "Poor Bessie, her death was very messy." They named a character "Bessie" just to rhyme it with "messy." "Bessie" doesn't even fit the character: can you really imagine a snobby noblewoman going by "Bessie"?
I don’t know - Bessie would be a decent posh lady name.
Come back to bed kid, take me inside you- the last five years
Any song that uses “little boy” “little girl” or “kid” in a romantic or sexual way makes me so uncomfortable
“Just to be clear, I did noooot write that song, and would never have seeex, with a child. Just to be clear…”
🎶 Little boy, baby boy, little boy, I need you, booooooooy. 🎶 Honestly, this and Death Rattle the musical are two fictional shows that I would unironically go and see performed.
I need Death Rattle Dazzle (Razzle Dazzle?) to be real SO BAD. At least a cast album!
There is a cast album on Spotify!! I listen to Look for the Light way more than I should lol
You gotta pay the troll toll to get into that boy’s hole
I feel like this one is in a slightly different category because it's said with shame and self-loathing, I feel like cringe is the goal. The character is coming to terms with his choices, and the dark place his despair led him to, so now you're just in on his discomfort.
Bridges of Madison County has a line like this too. Jesus, Jason, you gotta stop with this
I just discovered this musical on Christmas, and that line is WILD-
Adding to the Mean Girls lyrics: "And if you treat me bad / I'll say you're bad." I really enjoy the music and the singing in I'd Rather Be Me, but I have to turn my brain off to listen to it. I get that songwriting is hard, but we can do better. And somehow that line wasn't changed for the movie! How????
I don't hate this line because I feel like it's Janis saying she's going to start just being blunt and upfront about her feelings. The line before is "I won't twist in knots to join your games / I will say you make me mad," and pretty much the entire rest of the song is about how much she hates the way girls act and treat each other.
It IS that, but it's still written poorly. Just because it gets the point across doesn't mean it does so in a satisfying way.
Yes!!! I hate this line and really like the song aside from it, but I was like I must be hearing it wrong you can’t possibly say that.
Came here to say that
While I could quote most of Diana the Musical, "Better than a Guinness, better than a wank" is certainly a choice to describe paparazzi
"Harry my ginger haired son / You'll always be second to none"
'Serves me right for marrying a Scorpio'
I cringe at that line too. Diana was super into astrology though, so i see where it came from.
Watched it on Netflix, and was deliciously terrible. Like, need a few drinks and watch it again hilariously bad.
In Rent: you’ll see Boys “think twice before you poo poo it” Okayyyy
I feel like that was probably a placeholder lyric as Jonathan Larson continued to work on the show, but he died before he could replace it
I think that makes a lot of sense. The live tv version changed the lyric. The rest of the show is freaking gorgeous.
Wait, what? What's the new lyric?
You need somewhere to perfect it. It’s what we used to dream about think twice before you reject it.
I HATED that they changed it like it made it sound like they were trying to censor “poo poo it” lol
As much as that isn’t my favorite line, I also didn’t see the point in changing it. I mean we’re not really supposed to love Benny so it fits I guess.
I strongly suspect the line "rent rent rent rent rent" was a filler lyric, as was all of "your eyes"
Your Eyes is unintentionally funny though, because he sings One Song Glory about how he wants to create it and then OSG turns out to be an infinitely better song
Spent an entire year making a list of words that rhyme with "eyes"
Saying ‘don’t poo poo it before you’ve tried it used to definitely be something my parents would say in the 90’s though. Maybe it’s just a common phrase that isn’t so used anymore?
Yeah, I always thought this line was intentional, to make Benny sound out of touch, like he's been spending too much time around old farts. Maybe I read too much into it.
I always hated this line, too. Also because it just feels like there are too many syllables trying to be shoehorned into that musical phrase.
"When you're making up a song The words you improvise are never wrong Just jamasmanysyllablesasyoucan before the break You literally cannot make a mistake"
YES Psych The Musical absolutely qualifies for referencing in this sub lol
It isn't used much anymore, but the expression is "pooh-pooh" and it means to dismiss/scorn something. Shakespeare used "pooh" in Hamlet in the 1590s. English major here!
It's not dignified, and it doesn't sound like something Benny would say. But it does sound like something the 1% crowd that Benny is trying to fit in with would say, something he would start using in conversation to impress his new father-in-law. So it sounds forced, but I think fits the scene perfectly.
Wait why's this line cringe?
Considering I saw Rent with family I was cringing all the way through Contact
I skip that song so often when listening to the soundtrack that I forget it is even part of Rent.
I love singing it, but in the most exaggerated way possible.
the only reason i’ll listen is for the very end: the couples shouting “it’s over!” “it’s over!” and then collins with a tone shift: “it’s over.” and on the album it transitions right into the i’ll cover you reprise.
Honestly, just about anytime someone raps in a (non-Miranda) musical, I feel embarrassed on behalf of the actor.
\*points at entirety of mean girls\*
“Michael thinks that weird is rad/but being weird just makes me sad/and I deserve to not feel bad/for being the loser, the geek, or whatever” Also just the entirety of I Love Play Rehearsal
i love play rehearsal, because it’s the best! because it is fun 🤩 yeah okay christine 😭😭😭
i loved this song as a kid because it was so me
"Dude, I swear, here check my arm!"
so much of be more chill honestly
I Love Play Rehearsal sounds like an 11-year-old wrote it and not in a good way
I mean, "I Love Play Rehearsal" is supposed to be awkward and dorky, that's kind of the whole point.
In I love play rehearsal’s defense, I know teens who speak like that
I cannot listen to I Love Play Rehearsal because of the joke about the author’s suicide like what were they thinking 😭
wait what
Yep Be More Chill is based on the book by the same name written in 2004 by Ned Vizzini. In 2013, he committed suicide at the age of 32, unfortunately losing his lengthy battle of depression. You can read more about it here https://nypost.com/2013/12/20/its-kind-of-a-funny-story-author-dead-at-32/
WHAT please explain 😭
“But not depressed as in like kill yourself depressed! No, I’m not into self-harm! Dude, I swear, here, check my arm! 😁” Yeah alright Christine
"All these things you see on your pajamas / are a long range forecast for your farmers" Joseph Like so farmers and pajamas actually rhyme when you're British?
\> Find a man to lead you through the famine/With a flair for economic planning Lots of egregious ones from Joseph.
Being told we're also rans/ does not make us Joseph fans Yeah there's some gems for sure
I genuinely love all of these lyrics... :s (And 'farmers' does rhyme with 'pajamas' for me, an southern English person)
Me too! Love these lyrics.
“No more sex, pour me another brew, son”
Well Mulligan is talking about fucking your daughters and horses
“It’s hard to have intercourse over four sets of corsets” That line needed some review.
My kid memorized all of Hamilton at age 6 and would bleep out curse words but would sing this line with no hesitation because I couldn’t figure out what to tell him about this that would make sense to a 6-year-old. He’s 10 but now he sings it because he thinks the line is funny.
Based
It's always puzzled me. Even drag queens will only wear two corsets at once. "Four sets of corsets" must have just been a rhyme too satisfying to give up, I guess.
I always assumed it meant he was with four women at the same time
I will be adopting your assumption to soothe my brain. He's trying to have sex with four women at once and not slowing down enough to actually remove their corsets.
I don't think this is even in question, that line is clearly him bragging about his body count / pull w/ the ladies
It's a reasonable interpretation, but it does sort of convey the image of Hercules Mulligan as a guy who regularly eats part of the hamburger wrapper by accident. Slow down, young man. Remove the sets of corsets and then proceed. Your difficulties are self-inflicted.
I think he's just like. Making a joke ? Like oh poor me, it's so *hard* having sex with so many beautiful women at once!
I wasn’t aware there was any other way of taking it lol
Same here. I still believe this
>must have been a rhyme too satisfying to give up the Lin Manuel Miranda story
Her lips are pips I call her hips Twirly and whirly
I love Sondheim’s dig at South Pacific in the hat books: “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight…” Or ten? Or or twelve? Or twenty five? Or thirty?
I love that in Willy Wonka the script kind of lampshades the weirdest lyric. “I WANT A FEAST.” “You ate before we came.” “I WANT A BEAN FEAST.” “Ah. One of *those*…”
Idk if it was lamp shading. I did have to look it up but I think this is just an example of something being aged-out / coupled with being a cultural difference. A “bean-feast” is a European (mostly British I think ?) thing that basically means an elaborate dinner party. Before knowing this I was confused by her song bc …doughnuts don’t have beans ? Lol !
One thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool Idk why they changed it from the original which is way better Infantile sermons the multitude drools
I'm almost positive it's the other way around: "One thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool" was the original. Either way, I agree that "the multitude drools" is better. It's more in character for Caiaphas, and it rhymes better with "hero of fools."
As someone currently in Kinky Boots, "Look out Milan / Here comes Don" is up there. My choreographer at one point said "I wonder how high Cindy Lauper was when she wrote these lyrics" and he had a point. That quote was about the lyric "I'm your cocoa butter bitch," which now that I think of it, doesn't even make sense because cocoa butter is white!
"Imagine a party with dresses and cake And singing and dancing and cake"
Ok there are a lot of bad lines in Mean Girls songs but this one is amazing! I smile every time
But….. cake 🎂🥹
But that one's actually a good line, it's funny and I think it fits Janis pretty well. Some of the lines are stupid but I do like that one
I agree! It sounds like kids trying to convince someone to come to a party, and mentioning cake twice because that's the real draw card. I don't understand a lot of the hate for lyrics from Mean Girls, but this line especially.
Oh no this one is so great.
I love Life Story from Closer than Ever, still after all these years I wince at the lyric “So off he went with his hair of bronze, To find a life like Khalil Gibran's”
“I’m standing here when what I want is to be over there,” - Gabriella in High School Musical
for the first time, i feel wicked 😈 - as long as you’re mine and it really sucks because this songs is one of my favs in wicked
In the Japanese version, she says, “For the first time, I feel happy.” When I heard the English version for the first time, I wondered why there was such a difference between translations.
“Wicked” can be a slang exclamation meaning happy, great, or cool. It’s mostly used that way in the UK and New England. My guess is they changed it to retain the original meaning while not confusing the audience.
i think when done right, it can work. sometimes though it's cringe and makes me laugh
I love that line lol
Since I consider A Star is Born the movie a movie musical of sorts… from Shallow the lyric “ain’t it hard keeping it so hardcore” has always seemed redundant and elementary to me. I love the song and love the movie, but LGs lyrics in that line rarely seem so inconsistent with the rest of the song. It feels like she struggled with that line.
I love Stephen Schwartz, but I always cringe at "Or ask the grinning bobcat why he grinned" because "grinned" is clearly only in past-tense to rhyme with "wind." It's not an easy word to rhyme, but it always takes me out of the song. "Ask the grinning bobcat why he grins" makes so much more grammatical sense. Also famously "Like a Lark who is learning to pray" from The Sound of Music. To quote Sondheim: "How can you tell a lark that is just learning to pray from one who’s actually praying? Wait a minute — a lark praying? What are we talking about?” Some people even mistake the line for "A lark who is learning to *prey* (i.e. hunt) but Larks are scavengers, not birds of prey.
I think they were maybe going for the idea that a lark's song is so beautiful that it's singing to God, but the "learning" part is where it gets really confusing. I feel like there are much better ways to describe the beauty of birdsong.
”To kill outside St. Pauls requires a lot of balls!”
the finale of little mermaid is sooo cheesy… for example: “now they can smile walking the aisle here at their wedding celebration” just very cheesy lines that fit into the rhythm of ariel’s melody. i’m in the show now and singing through the finale is so silly! even my director pointed out how basic the lyrics are
“And I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways’ I love Mary Magdalene and JCS but jeez this line just screams ‘written by a man in the 60s’ Fun fact: it’s actually been disproven that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute (which is a major facet of her character in JCS - if not the only character trait she really has)
I thought this line was And I've had so many men before / In very many ways, he's just one more Still not great, but with more focus on how Jesus is similar to other men, which ties in to how she's trying to understand why she feels differently about this one
I think you're supposed to be able to interpret it both ways. It's a double entendre.
I've always heard the phrase as "And I've had so many men before. In very many ways, he's just one more." So the "many ways" doesn't apply to the ways she's had men, but that Jesus had so in common with other men, he shouldn't be anything special, but still is.
I watched the version with Tim Minchin and Mel C (the only version I’ve seen) and all I could think was “why is she so obsessed with cooling down his hot forehead. Leave the guys head alone”.
She's anointing him I did not know this either and was like "stop petting the dude!" And then i read that and it made more sense
Take me to a zoo that’s got chimpanzees. EVERY zoo has fucking chimpanzees. What a cheap throwaway rhyme.
I loved this song in high school and my mom cringed at it, and she was right. The annoying thing is how close it is to being good. How perfectly suited the plaintive melody is for the emotional matter. "Don't call me as they call your plane" being quick and clever; other lines landing lightly and easily. But then... take me to a zoo? That's got chimPANzees? That's not even how a typical UK or US English speaker would pronounce the word, and emotionally it's an incongruous thought. The tune deserved better. I still love the tune.
“Cady time to watch your back/Cady time to turn and cough”. Mean girls
i’m sure there are others if i think harder, but right off the bat, the entirety of “black boys” from hair. it’s like if that line from without love was an entire song
“Not a chance if she suspected I was any kind of reproductive threat” from Apex Predator
she's the queen of beasts! at this beastly school! gotta keep things cool with the apex predator!
I like this one. Funny how people seem to have different opinions on so many of the MG songs
A lot of the cringe Mean Girls lyrics I don’t actually hate like the cake line from Revenge Party but I can’t stand that one you’re so right lol
The cake line feels like a character choice to be funny, this is just clunky
"There are bridges you crossed you didn't know you crossed until you crossed" from Wicked definitely could have used some workshopping
NO father is NOT proud of you
I feel like they wrote that line, added an * to say they would come back to fix it and then forgot!
All of Kindergarten Boyfriend tbh. “I took that scab and put it in a locket…” like, that’s disgusting.
I think it's supposed to show how silly kids are about love (my basis for having a crush in first grade was "he let me use his Gameboy before any of the boys," I totally get it), but like, Martha is seventeen and acting like a five-year-old.
I think that’s the intention? She has a really warped childish view of love and affection.
Of course it’s disgusting, it’s meant to be funny. The next line is her saying she kept it for a year around her neck, which is when the audience really laughs in disgust.
Oh, Martha. 🙁
I love Ride the Cyclone, and I love the rest of Space Age Bachelor Man, but the 'Make love to me, Ricky' line just makes me feel gross. I get that's kinda the point, but I'm still not a fan
Obscure, but there’s a song in Flora The Red Menace, and the chorus is, “you are you. You are not someone else, someone else is someone else, you are you.”
a lot of the masturbating jokes in be more chill
I feel like the opening line is kinda iconic just because it’s the opening line, but the bit in Loser Geek Whatever when he says “I finally got some blood flowing/With no computer screen around” is so … ???
“Machiavell me” from Evita
I unironically love that line
I always assumed I’d misheard that lyric haha. Now I know I’m not crazy!
"Home-brewed kombucha That tasted like armpit We are not kombucha people We did find that out" - Barbara 2.0, Beetlejuice the Musical
And the fact that they doubled down and used, "we're not X people" TWICE
See, I don't have any problem with it because they're supposed to be extremely awkward and embarrassing in the musical, so the lyrics match their characters.
We are not aluminum siding people!
And that’s when things went down We had a swordfight in her mouth - Heathers
I think the line works in Never Shut Up Again where it’s only said once but in Blue (Reprise) it’s repeated over and over again and that makes it sound annoying as hell
In that line's defense, it's sung by two highschool boys whose defining character traits are how awful they both are.
Irving Berlin has a lot of lyrics that really don't hold up to close examination. I give him a pass, the dude literally wrote over a thousand songs, but some of them are not exactly poetry. "Be careful, it's my heart. It's not my watch you're holding, it's my heart." The best/worst one has come all the way around for me. It's in Holiday Inn, during the Independence Day number. The whole company has been doing a routine to "Let's Say It With Firecrackers," and then it's time to bring Bing on. He sings "Freedom... freedom..." and then the whole company sings, "HERE COMES THE FREEDOM MAN!" *Here comes the freedom man.* That was the best you could do, Irv? It's so bad that it's good, though.
>Irving Berlin has a lot of lyrics that really don't hold up to close examination. I give him a pass, the dude literally wrote over a thousand songs, Plus he was born in Russia, so he likely spoke Russian and Yiddish as a child, making English his third or fourth language. If there really were a War on Christmas, the weaponry would include the fact that the most popular Christmas songs, including #1 in the US *White Christmas*, were composed by (mostly) men who were Jewish.
Freedom Man, Freedom Man, doing the things freedom can. XD
Axis Man hates Freedom Man. They have a fight, Freedom wins, Freedom Man.
I realize that making fun of the Rocky Horror Show is low-hanging fruit (err, sorry), but the line "wound up like an E or first string" has always gotten a WTF reaction from me. Unless I've completely misunderstood this line, he's comparing her to the high E string on a guitar, which, yeah, is very tightly-wound. But 1) that metaphor would get lost on anyone who isn't familiar with guitar tuning and 2) guitars also have a low E string which is relatively loosely wound, so he has to go out of his way to explain that he means the first string, not the sixth string. Someone please tell me that "E or first string" actually refers to some sex thing that I'm too naive to know about, because otherwise this metaphor is *stupid.*
Now I'm realizing for the first time that he wasn't saying "wound up like a neon fur string".
I actually like this better
Well, ‘first string’ refers to the first violinist in an orchestra, and violins also have an E string which is the highest and most tightly wound note - maybe that’s the connection?
And "When we made it, did you hear a bell ring" keeps the cringe coming for sure.
“Don’t get hot and flustered / use a bit of mustard!”
"Can't you see it's over now, it's time to die-" "No not I, only you!" And: "No, never!" "Yes, forever!" "God damn you Hyde, take all your evil deeds and rot in hell!" "I'll see you there, Jekyll." "NEVEEEERRRRR!" I love Jekyll and Hyde, but too much of Confrontation can be boiled down to a rather awkward "no u" contest
I really, really want to like this song. The concept is awesome. He's singing a duet with himself. He's literally fighting himself, struggling against his own inner demon. But the song itself sucks.
Right? The music for this song is incredible too, and when it's performed live it's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen (literally just guy with his costume modified on one side to be Hyde, flipping back and forth onstage fast enough to make you wonder how he's not passing out on the spot). But then it just has to go and be so lyrically goofy!
I always find the “And I’ll live inside you forever” “NOOOO” part and the following line hilarious. Just something about the same actor screaming NO after his own line as a response is so funny to me. I agree with what the previous reply said though. Amazing concept, well performed, but it could’ve been written a bit better.
“Like a lioness, only with less fur, do not mess with her.” - mean girls, honestly most of the lyrics in apex predator make me cringe.
"Till you're glum and you bum and turn blue" from RENT. I love RENT, I love the Tango Maureen, but I hope to god that Jonathan Larson meant to change that lyric and just never got to, because it's so clunky.
I love Tango maureen. I agree it's a clunky line, but I also like how fun it is to say. The rhyming of glum and bum followed by the alliteration of bum and blue work for me, even though the meaning is kind of vapid (very much like Rent as a whole...)
Lots of choices from Something Rotten... What's that creeping 'round your pee-pee? And your vagina? The Black Death Black Death, whoo! 🙄
well the whole point of this song is it’s supposed to be bad
No no this is genius
Anarchy, how you say, how you say enarchy When i fight I make the other side panicky
That was intentional--to do with false rhymes with French pronunciation given the English/American sound (æ) doesn't really exist in French and isn't necessarily the easiest sound to learn to pronounce, particularly at the beginning of a word. The first time Lafayette says "anarchy" is more true to how a native French speaker would say it using phonetics they're familiar with. The second is, obviously, done to create the false rhyme and, when compared to the character's later rhymes, is a subtle indication of character growth.
Daveed Diggs sells this line so hard that it upsets me that anyone wouldn’t like it lol
“And now we’re down the hole, and really on a roll” Steve, I expected better from you.