When I was in sixth grade, my chorus teacher picked a couple of truly surreal songs for us to perform at the Spring Sing. Both were songs that had been written around pre-existing texts, which just seemed like asking for trouble to me (later, in my dance career, I would discover that some people preferred to choreograph a piece and then tried to find some music to go with it – just as inconceivably backwards, if you ask me – and I also read about Landscape’s supposed working method of shooting the video first, writing the words second, and composing the music last, but I think they’re just lying). It would be one thing if the text was written in even-metered verse – as difficult as it may be to set, for example, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven to music, once you had figured out a musical phrase that matched the syllable count of the verses, you were pretty much home free. But these texts offered no such comfort. One of them was a poem by that most musical and even-tempoed poet, e.e.cummings. Watching the poor composer try to twist a musical phrase around
sam was a man
grinned his grin
done his chores
laid him down
deep sleep
was somewhat entertaining, but the result was far from catchy and hummable. But the award for least forgiving pre-existing lyrics has to go to the poor tortured soul who decided he would write a song using, as lyrics, the 50 (nifty) United States. In alphabetical order. “Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut...” What was he thinking? The result of the song, which has to have been the point, is that once you do learn it, you will forever be able to recite the 50 states in alphabetical order – something I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do until I die. But what a Herculean task – especially since he chose to leave them in order. It’s one thing for Tom Lehrer to put the chemical elements to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan (no mean feat), but at least he had the (relative) freedom to rearrange them as he saw fit, and the added bonus that a lot of the elements actually rhyme (“there’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium...”). To try to wrap a smooth musical phrase around the impossibly bumpy landscape of alphabetical state names is just too much, as is clearly evident to anybody who’s ever actually heard the song.
But I digress.