"Everything's Coming Up Roses" is a song with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, written initially for the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy. Introduced in the show's inaugural production by Ethel Merman, "Everything's Coming Up Roses" became one of Merman's signature songs.

Overview

According to Sammy Cahn, the song had its genesis in the 1947 musical High Button Shoes, for which he was the lyricist. Cahn wrote lyrics to Jule Styne's music for a song titled "Betwixt and Between", to be sung by a female character who cannot decide between two men. The director of High Button Shoes decided the song did not fit well into the show and removed it.

When composing Gypsy, Styne decided to re-use the music for what became "Everything's Coming Up Roses", with new lyrics by Sondheim. It took Sondheim a week to come up with the title; the lyricist recalled: "The point was to [coin] a phrase that sounded as if it had been in the language for years but was in fact invented for the show." (The similar phrase, "come up smelling like a rose" has in fact been in general usage since the early 20th century, and the similar idiom "roses, roses all the way" derives from a Robert Browning poem The Patriot[1]) Director of the show Jerome Robbins responded to Sondheim's lyrics: "Everything's coming up Rose's what?" prompting Sondheim's assurance that "if anybody else has that confusion – anybody connected with the production, in the audience, any of your relatives – I will change the title."[2]

"Everything's Coming Up Roses" is performed at the end of the first act of Gypsy by stage mother Rose, upon learning her daughter June has eloped, abandoning the vaudeville act, and leaving Rose without a star for the show to which she has devoted her life. Rose's response is to make her other daughter Louise the object of her dubious star-making abilities. The title "Everything's Coming Up Roses" is a pun: Besides "roses" representing happiness, the title is referencing the possessive "Rose's" as in Rose's way or "Rose" as in Rose becoming a star herself, through her daughter.

Ethel Merman biographer Brian Kellow notes that while objectively "Everything's Coming Up Roses" seems "a big, brassy paean to the power of positive thinking ... done in the old, electric Merman style", within the context of the show "the song becomes a chilling illustration of blind ambition mixed with megalomania". Kellow quotes Stephen Sondheim to the effect that while Merman's comedic prowess was "nonpareil" as showcased in Gypsy's first act she lacked the dramatic precision to be fully effective as the play grew darker; thus, Sondheim recalled: "I wrote a song of the type that [Merman] had sung all her life, like [the Anything Goes number] 'Blow, Gabriel, Blow', which only requires a trumpet-voiced affirmation." However Sondheim added that Merman performed the song with an "intensity [which] came as a surprise."[3]

The emergence of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" as a Broadway anthem began with the song's melody being used to open and close the 14th Tony Awards ceremony on April 24, 1960. (Ironically Gypsy won none of its eight Tony nominations.)[4]

In 1974, Ethel Merman appeared in a television advertisement singing new lyrics to the tune of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" to promote the Colgate-Palmolive dishwashing liquid Vel. That same year Merman recorded "Everything's Coming Up Roses" for her album Merman Sings Merman recorded with Stanley Black & the London Festival Orchestra. She again recorded the song for The Ethel Merman Disco Album in 1979. In a cameo in the 1980 film Airplane!, Merman sings a few bars of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" in what became her final film appearance.

Notable covers

Other versions of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" include:

References

  1. ↑ "roses, roses, all the way". TheFreeDictionary.com.
  2. ↑ Citron, Stepen (2001). Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber: The New Musical. New York City: Oxford University Press. p. 92. ISBN 0-19-509601-0.
  3. ↑ Brian Kellow. "Merman: A Life". Large print ed. Thorndike Press, Waterville ME (2008) ISBN 978-1-4104-0508-1 p.395-6
  4. ↑ Caryl Flinn "Brass Diva: the life and legends of Ethel Merman" University of California Press Berkeley & LA CA (2007) ISBN 978-0-520-22942-6 p.309
  5. ↑ Dick, Bernard F. (2006). Forever Mame: the life of Rosalind Russell. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. p. 209. ISBN 1-57806-890-8.
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