This Is How Sunday Mornings Are At My Place

A brief look at highlights in the Sunday morning song canon:

Kris Kristofferson’s Sunday Morning Coming Down is about being miserable and hungover.

The Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning is a gentle gripe about the world not leaving you alone to be stoned.  But hey, it’s nothing, man.

The Commodores’ Easy is about leaving a lousy girlfriend, and its Sunday morning is figurative (“easy like Sunday morning”).

U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday is about a massacre that occurred late on a Sunday afternoon, so it’s probably, strictly, a Monday morning song (“I can’t believe the news today”).

No Doubt’s On Sunday Morning is about a breakup recollected, as it were, in tranquillity.

Maroon 5’s Sunday Morning is about having a nice lie-in with your loved one.

Joe Jackson’s Sunday Papers is about the joys of tabloid gossip, and it counts, I think, because its papers are delivered through the door.  That traditionally happens in the morning.

None of these are about my Sunday mornings.  This is my Sunday morning:

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning.
It’s 6am and there’s a lawn to mow –
No, wait, it’s raining.
School uniforms
Will need to be dried
Inside today.

Kids, whose coat is this?
Well, who on earth is Jack?
We’re out of milk, and
I could use the UHT, but
Why have coffee just to make it taste like – ?

Shit, that birthday party,
When does it? – ah, not ’til 10 –
We’ll need to buy a present and a card,
We’ll get the gift bag that kid gave to us
And give it back to him again,
On Sunday morning.

What’s that outside?
Is that a dog?  That’s not the neighbour’s dog.
No, I don’t know why
The remote’s not working.
Try blowing on the batteries,
I’ll go get milk.

The servo should be open,
No, the chemist’s will still be closed
On Sunday morning,
How the driveway floods these days.
Cement would cost a thousand, fifteen hundred, maybe more, and
The same again for the garage door,

It’s time to trim the plum tree
Before it fruits all over Sonia’s car
Like it did last year.

The paper says the economy’s wrecked,
based off these numbers –
“based off”, that isn’t grammar –
Well, not grammar I respect,
I mean, for which I have respect,
Goddamn that plum tree.

Hi, I’m back with milk.
I’ll get hayfever tablets when the shops aren’t closed.
Well, it’s Sunday morning,
So, I guess at 10 –

Shit, that birthday starts at 10.
Well, I dunno, how old is he, eight?
He’s not my friend. Does he like books?
Would he like one of yours?
Well, you know a new one?
Cash in an envelope it is again,
on Sunday morning

Is that dog still there?
I’ll put the uniforms on to wash.
I’m not sure about the bacon,
It was old last week.
You can’t wear that to a party,
Because it’s raining, that’s why.
No, it is – well, it will be –
Try your jeans.
They might, just try.
Those aren’t your jeans.
Alright, alright, you’re dressed,
But with a jacket,
No, no, with a jacket,
It was not a request,
On Sunday morning.

Some other batteries might work.
There are three inside the race car,
Rechargeables, I think.
I charged them up last Sunday morning.

God, yes, a coffee, thank you.
Oh, that hits the spot.
I’m glad we didn’t use the UHT.
I’ll do the lawn next week.
The coat? Apparently it’s Jack’s.
Can’t wait to get to work tomorrow morning
And relax.

An Original Christmas Song, For Your Delectation

I was at the back of the express lane at Woolies, Calwell, around the middle of December 2008, and the guy in front of me realised he’d forgotten something.  He left the queue to fetch it.  When he got back, the following exchange occurred:

Me:  It’s alright, just go back in front of me.

Him:  Really?

Me:  Yeah, it’s fine, I’m not in a hurry.

Him:  OK.

Woman at checkout:  Wow!  You don’t see much of that at this time of year!

Hence:

At Christmas Time

Let the song be sung,
Let us all revere
The man who kept his manners
Throughout this time of year.

He said, “After you, excuse me,
No worries, not at all.”
No kicking other people’s children
When at the shopping mall.

So we make him immortal in music.
We celebrate his deeds in rhyme.
The man who was not a dick
At Christmas time.

Let the tale be told,
Let the bards relate
Of she who finished eating
With food upon her plate.
She said, “I am full, no really,
I’ve reached my Plimsoll line.”
A miracle, she called it quits at
Her second glass of wine.

So we make her immortal in music.
We celebrate her deeds in rhyme.
The girl who was not a pig
At Christmas time.

Was not a pig, (was not a pig),
Was not a dick, (was not a dick),
Was not a pig, (was not a pig),
Was not a fatty, fatty boomstick.
Guts, (was not a guts),
Was not a dick, (was not a dick),
Was not a guts, was not a dick, not a pig, was not a prick.

So let the shrines be built,
One for every spot
Where people bought things only
With money what they got.

Salute the folks who – just once –
Didn’t turn into a bunch of selfish …

And we make them immortal in music.
We celebrate their deeds in rhyme.
The people who were modest,well-mannered,
Who were happy
At Christmas time.

Incidentally, this is only in three parts, except for the final cadence.  It sounds like more than three because of the reverb and chorus effects lavished upon it.  It is Christmas, after all.

And We’ll Be Fine …

Many, many years ago I played piano at the Tilbury Hotel for a show of Kander and Ebb songs, performed by Jacqui Rae, called My Own Space.  Partly because the song is professionally written, and because Jacqui performed it so well, I didn’t realise at the time what a stunningly up-yourself number the title song was.  Is.

Once I’d heard Liza Minnelli’s version, from The Act, where the song originated, its impressive self-love became more apparent. But then, that entire show is one colossal ego-stroke.

What, I’ve wondered ever since, would be like to write my own version of this kind of song?  How would a man phrase such sentiments? A man who could never sing the result like Liza, and shouldn’t try?

Incidentally, this is the kind of cabaret song you shouldn’t pre-announce by its title.  ‘Cos it’s the punchline.

Make Me Happy

Everybody hungers for the secret
Of a love that burns forever,
Of an eternal first kiss.
And all this time I think I’ve known the secret.
It’s simple, my darling, it’s this:

Make me happy.
Every time we wake
Let’s devote the day
To finding some new way to make me happy.

Since human life began,
No higher calling than
To make me happy.

You, you’re always saying
You need a purpose
And you do.
You, you need a purpose
And I need someone who

Can make me happy, happy.
Bend your dreams to mine.
Make me happy, my love,
And we’ll be fine.

Questions, little questions, you have questions yes, I know,
But watch this trick: three magic words,
and poof! There they go.

Make me happy,
For our future’s sake.
Life goes in a rush,
So tell yourself to shush
And make me happy.

Your wand’ring years are done,
Now you’re the lucky one
To make me happy.

You, you’re such a giver,
You’re there for others,
Staunch and true.
You, you’re there for others,
So I’ll be here for you

To make me happy, happy.
No joy more profound
Than to watch me from the ground.
Make me happy, my love,
Your turn to fly, my love,
Is maybe
Next time around.

A Nice, Hummable 32-Bar Standard about Foreplay

I was waiting at the coffee window at Tilley’s, and heard this coming from the speaker above me:

something something bark
What a perfect something park
something no moon
would you like sugars with that?

How lovely, I thought. Someone has written a whole song about the quaint custom of necking in cars. That should have been me.  I must look it up when I get home.

So I did, and it was Doris Day doing No Moon At All, written by Redd Evans and Dave Mann.  It’s more of a celebration of darkness in general, and its value to kissing couples, and only mentions necking in cars very briefly:

Don’t make a sound, it’s so dark
Even Fido is afraid to bark
What a perfect chance to park
And there’s no moon at all

A-ha, I thought. So the whole song about parking is still fair game. And off I went and wrote one.

Evans and Mann were smart, because making the whole song about parking means you need rhymes for “park”, and if you are being traditional about these things (as I am), you can’t repeat a rhyme once you’ve used it.  That means, if you use “bark”, you can’t use “embark”, or “disembark”. This may sound fussy, but it’s how some great, great songs were written.  Seek what the masters sought and all that.

I picture this one being done late, maybe last in the set, by a woman – or man – with confidence, wit and a tempting neck:

Now, at the tail-end of the evening,
Might I make a casual remark?
It’s far too late to stay and much too soon to go home,
So let’s park
Ooh, baby, let’s park

You drive, I’ll provide the navigation,
But, Captain, before we embark,
The course I’ve charted has one little stop on the way:
Let’s park
Ooh, baby,

Right there, secluded and inviting,
Or there, where all the lights are low.
And there, there’s even lower lighting.
Hey, you talk a lot, and the time for talk
Was over long ago
So, baby,

Now, as this story’s resolution
Completes our emotional arc,
The mandatory high-point hasn’t happened, not quite,
And if a thing’s worth doing, I am worth doing right,
With just a little temperature, we two could ignite
A spark
Ooh, baby, let’s park

For an especially Aussie touch, check out the magpie in the background at about 1:06!

Never Sleeps/Doesn’t Sleep, Heap/Something Else

Fred Ebb was too much of a pro to do this:

I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps
To find I’m king of the hill, top of the heap

Fred Ebb knew that “sleeps” doesn’t rhyme with “heap”, so he wrote:

I want to wake up in the city that doesn’t sleep

The “city that never sleeps” comes to mind more easily, probably because it was already an expression in 1977, when the Theme From New York, New York was written.  The City That Never Sleeps is, for starters, the 1953 film above – which I’ve never seen – set in New York.  The City That Never Sleeps is also a silent film from 1924 – which no-one has seen, apparently – and I don’t know which city provides its setting.

So if there was a ready-made expression lying around, why didn’t Ebb just use it, and put up with an extra “s”?  Because a Broadway writer (or at least, one of Ebb’s generation and craft) would develop an ulcer if he left superfluous un-rhyming letters lying about the place.

Liza Minnelli’s version, the first, leaves Ebb’s words as written at the climax:

… doesn’t sleep …
… king of the hill,
head of the list,
cream of the crop,
at the top of the heap …

Frank Sinatra’s recorded version, probably the best-known, has “doesn’t sleep” the first time, and then:

… nevers sleeps …
… A Number One,
top of the list,
king of the hill,
A Number One …

Ebb went on the record about not liking the “A Number One” line, although he acknowledged the big hit (and he was probably relieved that Sinatra didn’t mangle the sleep/heap rhyme).  Sinatra was, apart from adopting his usual cheery indifference to a written lyric, giving himself a better vowel for the long, drawn-out note, before the “These little-town blues” that follows.

I don’t know what the Chairman of the Board was smoking before this live performance, but we get “the city that never sleeps” in the spoken word intro, followed by “doesn’t sleep” the first time, and then:

… doesn’t sleep
… I’m number one,
top of the list,
head of the heap,
king of the hill …

What?  Why set up the sleep/heap rhyme, and then non-rhyme with “hill”?  And since when does a heap have a head?

Steve Lawrence’s version:

… doesn’t sleep
… king of the hill,
head of the list,
cream of the crop,
on the top of the … list …

Now that’s just weird.  It sets up the rhyme correctly, heads off down Minnelli’s path, then changes a word, Sinatra-style, but changes it to a non-rhymer with a bad vowel. Crazy. 

This confusion is a gift to drunken karaoke singers.  You can now sing pretty much anything, and sound like somebody.

The Continuing Saga of Early Peter Allen Albums – Continental American (1975)

 

The front cover, with Allen looking pensively airbrushed and dear God, what is in that drink?

The back, showing the star attraction at Reno Sweeney’s in his native habitat.

1. Just a Gigolo (Schöner Gigolo) (Leonello Casucci-Irving Caesar)
The writing credits for this one, on the record itself, are to Leonello Casucci and Irving Caesar; and Caesar did adapt the original German lyric, by Julius Brammer, to the English version we all know.  But what if Brammer had used a German word for gigolo, rather than, well, “gigolo”?  Is there a German word for gigolo?  In any case, things would have turned out differently.  Allen opens here with the rarely heard verse, and Caesar’s lyric reveals that the eponymous gigolo is French.  So why doesn’t he describe himself with the French word for gigolo? And what is the French word for gigolo?

Sung in that fashion popular throughout the 1970s (and indeed into the present): small, world-weary opening; key change, expansive vocal repeat; extended ending, highest note reserved for the last.

2. Everything Old Is New Again (Peter Allen/Carole Bayer-Sager)
“When trumpets were mellow, and every gal only had one fellow” – pure nostalgia-land.  Trumpets were consistently less mellow in the ’20s and ’30s, and no research indicates that women were more inclined to monogomy.

The very, very slick and cheesy female backing vocals were arranged, not by Cissy Houston – who did the rest of the album – but by “Linda November”.  Who?  Who is this skilful servant of the Dark Arts?  And who are the uncredited singers?  Are they all Cissy Houston?  Are they Linda November?  The whole thing is artfully arranged; the band comes in gradually throughout the song, and the strings don’t arrive until the key change chorus at the end.

Bob Fosse chose, for All That Jazz, a much better and far less campy live version.  And oh my, Ann Reinking.  I need a lie-down.

3. The Natural Thing To Do (Peter Allen/Carole Bayer-Sager)
The Allen/Sager canon includes a great many songs that can be boiled down to this: I’m really selfish, baby, but that’s just how I am.  Hey, why are you leaving?

4. Pretty Pretty (Peter Allen – Hal Hackaday)
So far on these albums, every time Allen has teamed up with the lyricist Hal Hackady, the words have tightened up into something a little more crafted, with less free-association indulgence.  Which doesn’t mean the song isn’t dated and preachy; it’s a better-written, dated and preachy song:

Twinkle twinkle
weekend star
How you wonder who you are
Down below the world’s so high
Like a rhinestone in the sky
Oh my.

These songs only work when the singer reveals, at the end, that she is the “pretty pretty” girl. And even then they don’t always work.

Hal Hackady would have been, at this point in his career, working on his more-or-less-flop Broadway musical Goodtime Charley, with composer Larry Grossman.  In 1972 he wrote the lyrics for a bigger flop, Ambassador (yes, a Henry James musical) with composer Don Gohman, who later committed suicide.  It’s a pity Hackaday didn’t use his hard-won experience to talk Peter Allen out of mounting a crap musical.  Maybe he tried.

Oh, and the female lead in Goodtime Charley?  Ann Reinking.  Sweet, sweet Ann Reinking …

5. Continental American (Peter Allen/Carole Bayer Sager)
Someone had too many Barcardis at the pressing plant, and Bayer Sager is here listed on the record label as “Bayer Sayer”.  She remains so for the rest of the album’s credits.  Is this the first recorded attempt at ’60s nostalgia?  Was anyone else finding the ’70s a little conservative, in the straitlaced year of 1974?  This is a better attempt at a longer song structure than the album’s later This Side Show’s Leaving Town.

Side 2

1. Just Ask Me I’ve Been There (Peter Allen)
First appeared three years earlier on the Tenterfield Saddler album, and in exactly the same spot.  This version has more backing, more singers, and it still refuses to take off.

2. I Honestly Love You (Peter Allen – Jeff Barry)
The opening chords are identical to those that will later begin the title track of I Could Have Been a Sailor!  Really, they are.  Am I the first to notice?  Is it deliberate?  What could it mean?

This oft-pilloried song (oft by Allen) is better than people think:  the singer really, really wants someone, but they’re both with another person, so it’s not going to happen.  He grabs the moment anyway and tells his never-to-be lover that he loves them.  There are far worse songs.  Curiously, this is billed on the actual record label as “I Love You, I Honestly Love You”, which, as titles go, would have been a bit much.

3. This Side Show’s Leaving Town (Peter Allen – Carole Bayer Sager)
With the marching band opening and closing, fading in and fading out, this is trying to be a grand opus, the kind of extended pop song that mars many a Billy Joel album. “Take me seriously,” the seven-and-a-half-minute duration says.  “I have something to say,” it says.  But the song, sandwiched between the grand intro and outro, is pretty mild:

Goodbye to the kid down the hall
He sure was fun
Been just like a daughter to me
That little one.

…

‘Cos hustlin’ is something I just can’t abide
Before we drown, and while we still got pride
This side show’s leavin’ town

And I can’t help but wonder: if Allen and Bayer Sager couldn’t abide hustling, why did they do so much of it, and get so good at it?  I want this song to be meaner.  Much meaner.

4. Just a Gigolo (Schöner Gigolo) (Reprise)
Frances Faye makes a welcome, tinkling appearance on a second piano, and contributes a yelping vocal in the background.  Much more fun than the first version, but it draws attention to how underpopulated the whole album is – only nine songs, one’s a repeat, and another’s from a previous album.

The Continuing Saga of Early Peter Allen Albums – Taught By Experts (1976)

I have posted about Peter Allen’s early albums (which are surprisingly hard to find) here, here and here.

 

1. Puttin’ Out Roots (Allen)
Alright, Aussies, no sniggering. “Putting Out”. “Roots”. Hee hee hee. The sentiment about getting away from the city to a farm is probably pretty genuine here, although it’s worth noting that Allen’s actual “farm” was a house on the beach in Port Douglas and another in Leucadia, California.

2. She Loves to Hear the Music (Allen/Sager)
Is this the first rapprochement of Allen’s twin performing styles? Namely, the intimate ballad presented as a razzle-dazzle showstopper? It’s heard most often in Quiet Please There’s a Lady On Stage (later on this album): a poignant subject, begun as a tearjerker, then undercut by a funkier chorus, which builds and builds to the finish.

Pros: slightly less schmaltzy
Cons: the subject tends to be forgotten in the flash of the presentation. Which is, really, the essence of camp.

3. Back Doors Crying (Allen/Sager)
An I-write-when-I’m-miserable-but-you’ve-made-me-happy number. “I need sadness to finish my rhymes” – really, what kind of a compliment is this to pay a lover? Thanks for drying up the well? You pulled me out of my adolescent funk, and now I can’t create? Does anyone want to hear this sort of thing?

Incidentally, Dusty Springfield on backing vocals.

4. I Go to Rio (Allen/Anderson)
Spare a thought for Adrienne Anderson. Who? The co-writer of this song. Also, the album’s “key grip”, Gregory Connell, Allen’s long-term (and apparently pretty feisty) partner, is one of the backing vocalists.

I can’t listen to this song without thinking of the video clip. In a period when only the Brits had any idea what to do with a music video, when every American-made clip amounted to “hey, you perform the number onstage and we’ll film it”, Peter Allen knew enough to give a performance worth filming. He’s balding, he’s over thirty-five, but he cheekily unbuttons his shirt and fans himself. Brave, funny, clever.

And I know of no other song that has an inner rhyme of “jungle” with “bungalow”.

5. Planes (Landis/Meltzer)
Thank God the strings on this are real. A lovely, sugary arrangement that would have sounded ghastly on some Prophet or Oberheim. The song, co-written by Allen’s producer Richard Landis, sounds as though it wants to become a standard. It wants it a little too much, and I wonder – did anyone cover it?

6. Quiet Please There’s a Lady On Stage (Allen/Sager)
Is this the best of the Allen/Bayer Sager songs? Yes. The best lines:

Quiet please, there’s a person up there
And she’s been singing of the sins
That none of us could bear to hear for ourself
Give her your respect if nothing else

That’s as good a summary as any of a great cabaret performance.

Side 2

1. This Time Around (Allen)
Again, this one sounds like it wants to be covered. It might have worked well on the soundtrack for The Goodbye Girl, but David Gates got that gig.

2. The More I See You (Gordon/Warren)
One of the effects of Allen’s literate, Bacharach and Broadway-inspired chord progressions is that he could cover a song 30 years old and have it sound like one of his originals, just as some of his originals (Everything Old Is New Again) sound like tunes from the 1940s. This one betrays its 32-bar roots by going on a bit too long, despite the key changes and the Herb Alpert trumpet solo.

3. Harbour (Allen)
Originally appeared on the album Tenterfield Saddler, and in exactly in the same spot. Here, the lyrics have been tweaked (“maybe we’re just growing older”). It’s still a nice, bittersweet break-up ballad, spoiled on this occasion by a showy accordion obliggato (calm down, Frank Marocco).

4. (I’ve Been) Taught By Experts (Allen/Hal Hackaday)
A disciplined lyric, except that it’s not clear what Lesson No.2 is. No.1 is to “make friends with pain” and No.3 is “better you get hurt than me”, but perhaps No.2 is hidden somewhere in the excellent bridge:

I lost my taste for tears
So many shoulders ago
I’m not sure I still know how to cry
But if you really want to learn, I try
to satisfy
Let’s begin with goodbye

5. Six-Thirty Sunday Morning/New York, I Didn’t Know About You (Allen)
Two songs on a Big Apple theme, sandwiched together. Very world-weary and dissipated, this sort of thing is hard to pull off when the singer has woken in a bed while staying near Central Park. Better to wake up in Central Park, face down, wet and shivering. Maybe near the zoo. With monkeys laughing at you. That’s what Tom Waits would have done.

Quiet Please would have made a much better – a killer – finish to the album.

What’s That? Not Enough Songs About a Vasectomy?

Hey Guys (An Apology to My Balls)

I promised I’d finish this one first, as voted by y’all here, and on facebook.  I know, it took me long enough, but here it is:

Hey guys,
Now that we’re talking again,
Can I apologise?
One man to two little men …

Hey guys,
Perhaps a drive to the coast,
When I can feel my thighs.
I know, you stayed at your post.
I guess what hurt you the most
Is that I took you by surprise.

But did you not think it strange,
When you woke that special morning
Without your growth?
I’d shaved you both.
Was that not like a warning?

Didn’t you feel the breeze and realise
There was a change in the air?

Hey guys?

Hey guys,
We’ll go out riding again
When you’re a normal size.
I’ll say you’re special, but then
You’re just like millions of men
Who’ve had a mid-career demise:

You did one thing really well,
You did one thing to perfection.
You served your term, and then the firm
Moved in a new direction,

Hey guys,
Don’t see this as an ending.
Instead it’s an unscheduled freedom that you’ve found,
And I still need you

To hang around.

You can hear it in my voice,
You can feel it when we touch,
You can see it in my eyes …

Hey guys.

Underrated Song: Photographs (Me In Love With You)

Alec Wilder wrote a highly opinionated book, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950. Gosh, it’s a good book.  He has the chutzpah to criticise Rodgers, Berlin, Kern – all of the greats – whenever he feels they’re not at their best.  Pfft, you might say – who’s Alec Wilder, apart from the writer of that lovely 1942 jazz standard I’ll Be Around?

Alec Wilder is the co-writer of this song, to a lyric by Fran Landesman.  Pfft, you might say – who’s Fran Landesman, apart from the co-writer of that lovely 1955 jazz standard Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most?

If you want a few laughs
Old photographs
Are fun to rummage through

Here’s our house in the snow
So long ago
And me in love with you.

Please, cabaret singers, start doing this one.  A tiny, modest little song, and it makes me ache with envy. Amongst other things.

The Continuing Saga of Early Peter Allen Albums

I wrote earlier about the surprising difficulty of finding a copy of Tenterfield Saddler, Allen’s second solo album as a singer-songwriter, and then I reviewed the album.  But now that I’ve read a few bits of Stephen MacLean’s The Boy From Oz, permit me one minor boast:  I can pick a cabaret ballad.  I thought the song Harbour was asking for it, and it turns out Liza (Minnelli, that is) paid Allen the compliment of recording it, and More Than I Like You as well.  Moreover, the passages on the album that seem to be about their time together are, in fact, about their time together.  But any fool could have spotted that.

MacLean describes Allen’s penning of the album’s title song on the roof of the Shangri-La apartments, in the winter of 1971, on Campbell Parade, across the road from Bondi Beach.  Courtesy of Google Maps, here’s that building:

I don’t know if the landlords have put up a plaque, but they should.

MacLean also writes:

Peter chose minor, almost maudlin chords for this melody, and made mention of kangaroos, jackaroos and emus.  Australian songs had done this before, usually descending to the level of kitsch.  Peter’s song, in its honesty, side-stepped vulgarity.

This is, apart from the business about the chords, spot on.  Here is Tenterfield Saddler‘s chord progression, simplified for clarity:

Verse:  F               C/E         Dm

Bb             F            C7

Bb             C/Bb       Am7          Dm7

C7sus4    C7           C7sus4   C7    F

Chorus:  F       F/E     Dm7   Dm7/C    Gm7   C7   Gm7  C7

Gm7   C7   Gm7   C7   F

As you can see, there aren’t that many minor chords (those Gm7s in the chorus really function as a C7sus), and the song’s in a major key. 

If it makes you feel almost maudlin (because a person can be maudlin, but a chord can’t), I reckon it’s because of two things: the waltz time and that descending bass line, one of those step-at-a-time bass lines that falls and falls, and falls, until it ends up exactly where it started.  That’s the sound of a merry-go-round, that chord progression is, whirling around and around, ever moving, ever coming back to where it started.  It fits the lyric’s theme of time’s ever-meddling presence beautifully. 

It’s a very, very good song; I’d be proud to have written it.