They're Playing our Song--OBC album on CD

I've heard the title song from this show so many times, but didn't really know what the show was all about. Turns out its about songwriters, pop songwriters, which explains the variety of pop genres that the score covers. I suppose the variety makes sense given the world of the show, but They're Playing our Song didn't keep me humming along. Pop songs don't have much of a shape or a climax often, where in the theater we're all about building toward that big moment; perhaps that is why this score just left me lying there.

This is basically a two-person show, although the male and female leads each have a back-up group that functions as a sort of Greek Chorus, or The Chorus of Inner Thoughts. I hear voices in my head sometimes, too.

For a two-person show, I wanted some better singing. Lucie Arnaz (in her Broadway debut) has a pleasant voice, but it is rather characterless--neither a pop voice nor a musical theater voice. Robert Klein has a pop voice with a decent range, but he does sound a bit like an aging heavy metal band singer, all rasp and cigarettes.

Music by Marvin Hamlisch
Lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager
Book by Neil Simon

Opened 1979 and ran for more than 1,000 performances, so some one must have liked it.
Cast: Robert Klein, Lucie Arnaz

Promises, Promises--Original Broadway Cast Album

More Jerry Orbach, please. Okay, let's listen to Promises, Promises, the Burt Bacharach show based on film The Apartment. Burt Bachrach? Of the 60s pop songs? Didn't he just right for Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick? Well, no, apparently he also wrote this show with lyric-writer Hal David, book-writer Neil Simon, and produced by David Merrick.

This score is more than pop-twinged. It is pure pop, and pop of the 1960s. I don't mean that in a bad way, I merely point it out to put the rest of what I'm about to say into some sort of context. Singing traditional musical theater songs is very different from singing pop songs. Not that I sing much of either, but that is my impression. This was a time of tremendous change in the music industry as a whole and for Broadway too. Other 1968 musicals include Hair, Richard Rodgers' No Strings, and 1776. Include Promises, Promises in the mix and you've got some very different styles of musicals. It must have been a challenge for singers to morph into whatever musical style was being asked of them, or for producers to find singers versed in the musical style called for by each score. It probably still is.

To my ears, not much of the singing in Promises, Promises is successful. Much of it sounds under pitch. Even the wonderful Jerry Orbach, who is the most successful singer on this cast album, is sometimes under pitch. Listen to "A Pretty Young Girl Like You" and you'll hear what I mean. Jill O'Hara is more successful than many of the men in her singing, particularly the best known number from the score "I'll Never Fall in Love Again."

Promises, Promises
Music by Burt Bachrach
Lyrics by Hal David
Book by Neil Simon
Opened in 1968
Cast: Jerry Orbach, Jill O'Hara, Donna McKechnie, Edward Winter, Marian Mercer, A Larry Haines.