We’re posting lyrics of hit songs so that our songwriters can study them to see how winning songs are constructed. Of course a lot depends on the melody, the rhythm and the artist as to whether or not the song will sell… and whether or not it is in the right place at the right time!
So this week’s Featured Lyrics are from songwriters Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, and made famous by too many artists to name but we’ll include the one by Billie Holiday.
“Blue Moon” is a classic popular song written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934, and has become a standard ballad. The song was a hit twice in 1949 with successful recordings in the US by Billy Eckstine and Mel Tormé. In 1961, “Blue Moon” became an international number one hit for the doo-wop group The Marcels, on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and in the UK Singles chart. Over the years, “Blue Moon” has been covered by various artists including versions by Elvis Presley, The Mavericks, Sha Na Na, and Rod Stewart.
Versions of this song are used liberally in the soundtrack of the 1981 horror-comedy film An American Werewolf in London.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in May 1933. They were soon commissioned to write the songs for Hollywood Party, a film that was to star many of the studio’s top artists. Richard Rodgers later recalled, “One of our ideas was to include a scene in which Jean Harlow is shown as an innocent young girl saying—or rather singing—her prayers. How the sequence fitted into the movie I haven’t the foggiest notion, but the purpose was to express Harlow’s overwhelming ambition to become a movie star (‘Oh Lord, if you’re not busy up there,/I ask for help with a prayer/So please don’t give me the air . . .’).” The song was not even recorded and MGM Song #225 “Prayer (Oh Lord, make me a movie star)” dated June 14, 1933, was registered for copyright as an unpublished work on July 10, 1933.
Lorenz Hart wrote new lyrics for the tune to create a title song for the 1934 film Manhattan Melodrama: “Act One:/You gulp your coffee and run;/Into the subway you crowd./Don’t breathe, it isn’t allowed”. The song, which was also titled “It’s Just That Kind of Play”, was cut from the film before release, and registered for copyright as an unpublished work on March 30, 1934. The studio then asked for a nightclub number for the film. Rodgers still liked the melody so Hart wrote a third lyric: “The Bad in Every Man” (“Oh, Lord . . . /I could be good to a lover,/But then I always discover/The bad in ev’ry man”, which was sung by Shirley Ross. The song, which was also released as sheet music, was not a hit.
After the film was released by MGM, Jack Robbins—the head of the studio’s publishing company — decided that the tune was suited to commercial release but needed more romantic lyrics and a punchier title. Hart was initially reluctant to write yet another lyric but he was persuaded. The result was “Blue moon/you saw me standing alone/without a dream in my heart/without a love of my own”.
There is an introductory verse (a common technique employed by songwriters of the 1920s and 1930s) that comes before the first refrain of the song. Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart used it in their 2004 version of the song (Stardust: The Great American Songbook, Volume III). The last line of this extra verse is “Life was a bitter cup for the saddest of all men.”
Robbins licensed the song to Hollywood Hotel, a radio program that used it as the theme. On January 15, 1935, Connee Boswell recorded it for Brunswick Records. It subsequently was featured in at least seven more MGM films including the Marx Brothers’ At the Circus and Viva Las Vegas.
The lyric presumably refers to an English idiomatic expression: “once in a blue moon”, meaning “very rarely”. The term refers to a second full moon within a calendar month, an event that occurs once every two or three years. (The origin of the expression is unclear). The narrator of the song is relating a stroke of luck so unlikely that it must have taken place under a blue moon. The title relies on a play on words, since blue is also the color of melancholy, and indeed the narrator is sad and lonely until he finds love. The song is noted for its ending with the exaggerated baritone “blue moon”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_(281934_song)
Lyrics to Blue Moon
Blue moon you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue moon, you knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will ever hold
I heard somebody whisper “Please adore me”
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold!
Blue moon!
Now I’m no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Songwriters Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers
Lyrics published by © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
http://www.metrolyrics.com/blue-moon-lyrics-billie-holiday.html
[You can also listen to the song on the above website in case the melody is escaping you.]