Saturn returned to bite me in the ass.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Day 9: A song that makes you hopeful
You know what genre specializes in hopeful songs? Musical theater! WHEE!
There are probably thousands of show tunes about hope, about believing things are “gonna happen, happen sometime, maybe this time,” etc., and I guess a subset of those actually make me hopeful (“Maybe This Time,” for instance, doesn’t make me hopeful, despite it being the perfect song about hope sung at the perfect point of Cabaret).
And so we come to the list of show tunes that make me hopeful. There’s “Frank Mills,” the run-on sentence of a love song from Hair, a song about optimism. There’s “I Can Do Better Than That,” from The Last 5 Years, a song about knowing where you’ve come from to get where you are (even if, as the audience well knows by the time “I Can Do Better…” happens, where you’re going is in ruins). There’s “A Cock-eyed Optimist,” from South Pacific, for obvious reasons.
Songs about learning things always makes me hopeful. Sondheim’s really good at these: “On The Steps of the Palace” and “Giants in the Sky” from Into the Woods. Of course, the biggest big gun of all learning-things songs is “Being Alive” from Company. If it weren’t for this little ditty, “Being Alive” would be my top pick:
Obviously.
Day 9: “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” from Funny Girl. Lea Michele’s version also accepted. :)
