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- BEING ALIVE [Company; 1970; music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim] It's Bobby's moment of truth at the end of Company, and it turns into perhaps Sondheim's most emotional wallop of a song.
- SEND IN THE CLOWNS [A Little Night Music; 1973; music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim] Some consider this Sondheim's finest song. It's certainly his most popular, charting twice on the Billboard Hot 100 for Judy Collins (in 1975 and 1977).
- LOSING MY MIND [Follies; 1971; music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim] Where "Seasons of Love" from Rent deals with an entire year, Stephen Sondheim's yearning, haunting "Losing My Mind" subtly deals with a single day: from "the sun comes up," to "the morning ends," to "all afternoon," ending with "sleepless nights."
- EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ROSES [Gypsy; 1959; music by Jule Styne; lyrics by Stephen Sondheim] There's something powerful about end-of-Act 1 anthems that catapult audiences into Intermission with excited chills and gooseflesh.
Nov 27, 2021 · ASSOCIATED PRESS. In his 91-year life, prolific composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim crafted some of Broadway’s most iconic tunes. From “ West Side Story ” to “ Into the Woods ,” his music...
Stephen Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist whose most famous work includes A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).
- "Getting Married Today," from Company
- "No One Is Alone," Into The Woods
- "Move On," Sunday in The Park with George
- "Being Alive," Company
- "Send in The Clowns," A Little Night Music
- "Could I Leave You?" Follies
- "Side by Side by Side/What Would We Do Without You?" Company
- "Ever After," Into The Woods
- "Jet Song," West Side Story
- "Finishing The Hat," Sunday in The Park with George
I don't remember why, but one day back when we all still worked in-person at the NPR offices, Ari Shapiro came by my desk when I wasn't there and left me a note. It said: I came up here to rattle off the lyrics to "I'm Not Getting Married" for you from memory, and you decided to be gone. What, I ask you, could be more important than this? - Guess (...
This innocuous title belongs to a song that is, as it sounds like it should be, about the fact that we are rarely as isolated as we feel. But because Sondheim is Sondheim, it appears in a moment of deep grief, and it casts this fact as part comfort and part warning. You are not alone, it says, because people will be there with you, to love you. And...
A vision of a woman appears to a frustrated artist and urges him to continue with his art. It would be so easy for this song to collapse into a pep talk, but one of Sondheim's many gifts was his understanding of creation itself — which is part of why he makes such a delightful character in the just-released Tick Tick ... Boom. George does not just ...
A lot of the Sondheim faithful see themselves as devotees of one show above all others: they are a Sweeney Todd person, a Sunday person, a Follies person. I am, more than anything, a Company person. The story of Bobby, a man surrounded by couples and terribly skeptical about marriage, ends with this climactic admission that what is terrifying about...
I will die on this hill: Few songs have gotten as unfair a deal as "Send In The Clowns." At some point, the combination of the fact that it was a pop hit for Judy Collins and the fact that it has "clowns" in the title started people down the road of thinking it was a corny easy-listening tune, when it's actually — like so much of Sondheim — quietly...
Up there at #1, when Ari's note pointed out that "guess" is the last line in another Sondheim song, he was talking about "Could I Leave You?" Follies is a great one if you like your musicals ... well, furious, both in terms of anger and, at times, in terms of frenetic energy. This particular number allows a woman a moment to finally tell her husban...
Well, I told you I love Company. And one of the things I particularly love about it is that while Bobby ultimately seems to see the value of marriage through the eyes of his friends, his friends are not spared in their treatment of their "extra" single friend. Sondheim always hides a knife in a cupcake, so of course you get Bobby singing this very ...
The genius of Into The Woods is that the first act is like a regular fairy tale with happy endings, and the second act complicates them all: people become unfaithful and get killed and stop loving each other in the same way. "Ever After" is the bridge between these sections, coming right at the end of the first act, and if you don't pay too much at...
I know, I know — he only wrote the lyrics. Leonard Bernstein wrote the music. And I know sometimes he's talked about not even liking the lyrics. But long before I was ready for the emotional notes of Company or the second act of Into The Woods, I listened to the cast album of West Side Story at home endlessly, endlessly. Apparently, as a small chil...
How not to end with Sondheim's own song about the power and cost of creation? He called his two coffee-table books of lyrics Finishing The Hat and Look, I Made A Hat. There are some amazing videos of Sondheim teaching young musicians that aired on television many years ago, and seeing the way he would correct a breath or the finest point of pronunc...
Jan 11, 2024 · He wrote music and lyrics for 16 shows, counting the posthumously produced "Here We Are," and lyrics solely for three (or four, depending on how you count) more, two of which — "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" — are among the most famous and highly-regarded productions of all time.
Nov 27, 2021 · Celebrate his life with a look back at a few of the many iconic songs he wrote over the course of his career. 1. “Maria” // West Side Story (1957) Though Sondheim enjoyed composing...
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Sondheim’s most famous single song is the bittersweet “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music,” which was recorded by Judy Collins a full year after the original production had closed and made the pop charts in 1975 and 1977.
