Songs about soulmates
In this recent thread, there was an interesting discussion regarding popular music about finding your soulmate (or thinking you’ve found your soulmate).
But no one mentioned the song that immediately came to my mind: “I’ll Know” from “Guys and Dolls.” That was a song I loved as a child. It’s sung by mission girl Sarah and smooth gambler Sky, who are meeting “cute”—that is, they can’t stand each other at the outset, and yet the audience knows, or at least strongly suspects, that before the musical is over, they will be singing another tune.
The funny thing about this song is that Sarah is saying that she absolutely knows with 100% certainty the kind of guy she’s looking for and with whom she’ll fall in love and live happily ever after. And she has imagined every detail about him, and will recognize him immediately the minute she meets him.
Sarah is most definitely not describing the charming Sky. He, in return, says he’s just going to react to things as they happen and doesn’t have a firm picture of the woman he’ll love, but he is just as sure as Sarah was that he’ll recognize that woman the moment he meets her.
And yet, of course (SPOLER ALERT for anyone unfamiliar with “Guys and Dolls”), after all the play’s entertaining twistings and turnings they end up together.
I tried to find a YouTube video of a good modern rendition of the song in a revival performance, and gave up. I’ve always detested the movie. Marlon Brando tries but he’s not a good singer (Hollywood decided not to dub him, however). And I just don’t care for movie musicals in general compared to the stage versions.
So here’s the stage version that I heard over and over as a child; just the audio. I thought it was beautiful then, and I still think so now. It’s very simple. Isabel Bigley, who played Sarah, has a clear high soprano (the part of Sarah is not an easy one to sing) that has just the right touch of primness. And Robert Alda, father of Alan, who plays Sky, has a voice with a wonderful mellow but slightly brassy timbre, instantly recognizable as unique. The contrast between their personalities isn’t just in the book and the lyrics, it’s right there in their voices.
And yet at the very end, how well they blend:
Here’s the markedly inferior movie version:
I have only seen the movie and a HS stage production of an abridged script, and don’t remember this song at all. That may be because, for me at least, the (slightly risque and totally hilarious) relationship between Nathan Detroit and Adelaide totally eclipsed the (totally cliched and thoroughly predictable) one between Sky and Sarah.
I didn’t link “Adelaide’s Lament” (which is among my all-time favorite Broadway songs) because it wasn’t about falling in love, but what to do thereafter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLdCahQz5tY
“Adelaide’s Lament” from the 1992 Revival Cast Recording of “Guys and Dolls”
AesopFan:
Adelaide is a great great character. She and Nathan have the great comic songs.
But Sarah and Sky have the beautiful songs.
One might be reminded of the “charmed” chemistry between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Zeffirelli’s “Taming of the Shrew”.
(A sequel, perhaps, to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”?…)
Thanks, neo. I have in my playlist Streisand singing it and also a recording of the 1992 Broadway revival (Josie de Guzman and Peter Gallagher), but for some reason never listened to the original cast. I very much wanted to see the 1992 revival mostly because of Nathan Lane, but I had moved out of New York a few years prior and never had the chance.
Au fond du temple saint.
Heh.
From a much earlier period you would no doubt enjoy Wiener Blut an operetta with music by the composer Johann Strauss the Younger. All the wonders and beauties of romance and true love.
I enjoyed this Neo. Thank you.
The different aims as “ideals”, tho both knowing “they’ll know” when their love comes, will remain a rich vein for drama, and for some comedy. Men often want easy sex and fast women, for fun — but want a more selective partner for a lifelong wife.
Women often want the strong, honest, reliable guy (beta?) for a husband, but find themselves attracted to the (alpha) scoundrels (Han says “there aren’t enough scoundrels in your life”. Leia says “I happen to like nice men” …)
It’s a cliché because so many of us see it, so often, in real life. (Happy marriages when the scoundrels do change into nice men. Keeping an attractive, tolerable dash of rebel.)
Best pop soulmate seeing song might be Monkees:
I’m a believer. (RIP Peter)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB9YIsKIEbA
Hey, I liked Brando’s singing. Omaha native!
Cornheard:
Brando sang well for someone who doesn’t sing. He sang better than I do.
But Brando’s singing isn’t something I’d ever want to listen to.
Thanks for this, Neo. It took me back to early childhood. I memorized most of the songs in “Guys and Dolls,” “Call Me Mister,” “The King and I,” and “South Pacific,” among others. “I’ll Know” was a favorite. How I loved to warble along with it. I still do.
I didn’t get some of the lines. “Chemistry? Yeah, chemistry!” was a puzzler. And what was a “breakfast eating, Brooks Brothers type”?
This reminds me of a Seinfeld episode. To paraphrase: You know how to find a soulmate, but not how to hold a soulmate…
Dance Me to the End of Love
Mizpants:
I’ve got a funny story about song lyrics. I also knew all those lyrics when I was very little, and I used to sing some of my favorites. One big favorite was “Fugue for Tinhorns” (“I’ve got the horse right here, the name is Paul Revere…”), which is a pretty funny song for a little 3-year-old to warble to entertain company. I didn’t know what it meant except it was about horses, and it was catchy. As a tiny child, I had no idea what “handicapper” was (“Now this is no bum steer, it’s from a handicapper that’s real sincere”). When I was very small, I thought the phrase was “handy capper.” A capper who is handy.
For years I never really thought about the song or the words, but I didn’t forget it. When I was in my forties or so, I was telling someone about how I used to sing the song. I was explaining about the lyric “handy capper,” and as I said the word as a grownup, I suddenly—and for the very first time—realized the word must be “handicapper.”
I listen to songs about love from old musicals and I feel like I’m opening a time vault from a long-forgotten civilization, almost as forgotten as Atlantis.
Ten years ago or so someone told me to watch “Carousel” and I did on DVD, but I found it almost incomprehensible.
It had great songs, “If I Loved You,” which was a sort of back-handed soulmate song, and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which became a soccer anthem in the UK.
It wasn’t incomprehensible like a Pynchon novel. But … carnival barker boy meets girl, they sort of fall in love, girl gets pregnant, boy takes part in an armed robbery for girl, robbery fails, boy stabs himself with knife and dies, boy tries to get into heaven and fails, boy is allowed one chance to redeem himself by returning to earth and doing a good deed for his daughter, then some complicated stuff I’m not going to try to paraphrase, and finally boy goes to heaven.
WTF?
huxley:
You may think “Carousel” is too hokey for words, but incomprehensible it’s not.
You may or may not enjoy my previous post on “Carousel” and one of the most beautiful songs in it.
huxley:
By the way, if you go to YouTube and look at the comments on videos like those ones I posted from “Carousel” in the link I gave you above, you’ll find that a lot of people—including young people, of course—also find that the songs and sensibilities of the musical seem to be part of an almost archaic time. But the main emotion people express in those comments seems to be a great longing for what those songs and movies convey, a longing that isn’t just nostalgia from old people, because many commenters who long for it are young.
neo: Didn’t say hokey. In no way did I mean that. Said incomprehensible. Not in the literal sense but in that the scenario seemed so far out of my worldview, the people seemed alien.
You may not think so.
And I did say it had beautiful songs.
Neo:
Yes, I remember “Fugue for Tinhorns.” The lyrics come rushing back into my mind. The chorus went:
Can do,
Can do,
This guy says the horse can do,
Can do,
Can do.
I had no idea what the horse could do. You were operating on a higher level with your confusion about
“handicapper.”
It’s amazing how perfectly we seem to remember these lyrics and melodies, and how much emotion they hold for us.
huxley:
I didn’t mean that I thought you were actually saying it was hokey. I meant that you might think that. I was just guessing at possibilities. I was also unsure why you were saying it was incomprehensible, because it was obviously part-fantasy and part just plain old-fashioned.
I know you said it had beautiful songs—and that’s why I thought that you might enjoy the clips at the link.
Neo — I can’t remember a more serious disagreement I’ve ever had with you! Okay, maybe Marlon Brando might not be a great singer, but Sinatra as Nathan Detroit, Jean Simmons as Sarah, Sheldon Leonard as Big Julie, how can you beat that? And all the people who came from the show — Vivian Blaine, Stubby Kaye, B.S. Pulley, Johnny Silver, what about them? Sky’s response to Nathan in their scene in Lindy’s is a rule I’ve held to my whole adult life.
In “Carousel”, Julie has no illusions about Billy.
Common sense may tell you
That the ending will be sad,
And now’s the time to break and run away.
But what’s the use of wond’ring
If the ending will be sad?
He’s your feller and you love him,
There’s nothing more to say.
All those great songs from musicals. As a 60-something boomer I find them all wonderful.
As to another song about a soul-mate I’ll add John Denver’s “Annie’s Song”.