You're the Top

"You're the Top" is a Cole Porter song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. It is about a man and a woman who take turns complimenting each other. The best-selling version was Paul Whiteman's Victor single, which made the top five.

"You're the Top"
Song
Published1934
Songwriter(s)Cole Porter

It was the most popular song from Anything Goes at the start with hundreds of parodies.[1][2]

The lyrics are particularly notable because they offer a snapshot as to what was highly prized in the mid-1930s and demonstrate Porter's rhyming ability.

Some of the lyrics were re-written by P. G. Wodehouse for the British version of Anything Goes.

People and items referenced in the song

The following is a list of the references used in the version recorded by Cole Porter on November 26, 1934:

The 1934 recording with Cole Porter's vocals and piano is available on a CD -- Cole Porter: A Centennial Collection (track 18 of 20), Sony Legacy, CD release 2007

Additional references in other versions of the song:

P. G. Wodehouse anglicised it for the British version of Anything Goes. Among other changes, he altered two lines from "You’re an O’Neill drama / You’re Whistler’s mama!" to "You’re Mussolini / You’re Mrs Sweeny" (both figures, later notorious, were widely admired at the time)[6][7]

Versions of the song
  • In 1985, a series of Heinz Tomato Ketchup commercials in Canada featured various cover versions of the song as their jingle.[8]
  • In John Mortimer's novel Paradise Postponed (1985) and the television series of the same name (Euston Films, 1986): A rendering of the song by a fictitious performer, Pinky Pinkerton, includes the line, "You're my Lady Grace", which signifies Lady Grace Fanner in the story.[9]

Parodies

Porter biographer William McBrien wrote that at the height of its popularity in 1934 to 1935 it had become a "popular pastime" to create parodies of the lyrics.[2] Porter, who himself had called the song "just a trick" the public would get bored by,[2] was flooded with hundreds of parodies, one reportedly written by Irving Berlin.[2] Despite the ribald nature of some of the parodies, McBrien believes few, including a King Kong parody, were written by Porter or Berlin.[10] The performance of the song in the American Cabaret Theatre biographical musical Cole & Noel (2001) had the line "I'm talkin' King Kong's penis".

References
  1. Redmond, James (1981). Drama, Dance and Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-521-22180-1.
  2. McBrien, William (1998). Cole Porter : a biography (1 ed.). New York: Knopf. pp. 169–171. ISBN 978-0-394-58235-1.
  3. Noah, Timothy (June 9, 2005). "A skeleton key to "You're the Top."". Slate. Retrieved 2020-09-09.
  4. Day to Day. June 10, 2005. Retrieved 2020-09-09.
  5. Botto, Louis (December 10, 1997). "A User's Guide to Cole Porter's "You're the Top". Playbill. Retrieved 2020-09-09.
  6. "Mayfair, the Duchess of Argyll and the Headless Man polaroids". Another Nickel In The Machine. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
  7. Hoge, Warren (16 August 2000). "London Journal; A Sex Scandal of the 60's, Doubly Scandalous Now". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
  8. "1985 Canadian commercial – Heinz Ketchup – You're the Top". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-13. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  9. Mortimer, John (1985). Paradise Postponed. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 014009864X.
  10. Noah, Timothy (18 June 2005). "Farewell to Berlin". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.