My favorite Sondheim. When George can only connect with the world by becoming the people in his sketches it's unsettling and heartbreaking and so well performed.
How the kind of woman willing to wait’s Not the kind that you want to find waiting To return you to the night What lyrics. There is no one who can spin words like Sondheim.
This badass musical needs to be a badass movie it would be so cool I think that victor garber Michael cervieres and Neil Patrick Harris would be a awesome guy cast even though they were in the Broadway cast
The best (and only as far as I know) song about the artistic process and what being involved with it means for the artist: the dedication and involvement (“…entering the world of the hat”) and the personal sacrifice, the loss of relationships (sometimes) if you’re unwilling or unable to compromise that dedication…
When I found out the band was no longer going on, years ago, I cried. My teen self loved them so much. I am so glad for their music. I still listen to them today, it makes me feel so much alive.
His performance always ring true. I never hear this song and know its meaning better than when Patinkin does it. I've heard it hundreds of times with other singers - but none convey its true meaning. Mr. Patinkin's true talent is communication.
GEORGE] Mademoiselles... You and me, pal... Second bottle... Ah, she looks for me... Bonnet flapping... Yapping... Ruff!... Chicken... Pastry... Yes, she looks for me Good Let her look for me to tell me why she left me- As I always knew she would I had thought she understood They have never understood And no reason that they should But if anybody could... Finishing the hat How you have to finish the hat How you watch the rest of the world From a window While you finish the hat Mapping out a sky What you feel like, planning a sky What you feel when voices that come Through the window Go Until they distance and die Until there's nothing but sky And how you're always turning back too late From the grass or the stick Or the dog or the light How the kind of woman willing to wait's Not the kind that you want to find waiting To return you to the night Dizzy from the height Coming from the hat Studying the hat Entering the world of the hat Reaching through the world of the hat Like a window Back to this one from that Studying a face Stepping back to look at a face Leaves a little space in the way like a window But to see- It's the only way to see And when the woman that you wanted goes You can say to yourself, "Well, I give what I give" But the woman who won't wait for you knows That however you live There's a part of you always standing by Mapping out the sky Finishing a hat Starting on a hat Finishing a hat... Look, I made a hat... Where there never was a hat
Just heard it (by Josh groban) the first time. This applies to every relationship i have and it is agonizing. Yet i know it's necessary... To make a hat
I love this because it’s so human. It’s imperfect and jumbled but so perfectly captures the emotion and feeling of George in this moment. I love LOVE Mandy’s vocal and physical choices in this role. Such a genuine actor.
Yeah Jake Gyllenhaal kinda btfo'd this but it's okay if you compare it to other old, shitty musicals like Hamilton and Legally Blonde. Props to this for inspiring Desperate Housewives I guess? Edit: Thanks for the upvotes
Someone just illustrated a story I wrote and this song just says it all. I can look at that and go, "Look, I helped make that image. Even though I didn't draw it, it represents something that came from my mind."
"they have never understood but if anybody could.." this is like realizing you lost someone while you're writing and you just start crying. So much of being an artist with relationships is realizing stuff through your work not even with the people. But does that make it a love song not really. It's so sad I love this
I’m a wannabe artist working on details in a new painting. I totally connect with Finishing The Hat. I work on every little detail, stand back and appraise it, change,something, stand back again, and on and on until it’s finished. But no artist is ever done finishing the hat.
The real genius of this song is setting up the balladeer as some rational stand in for the audience Only for an hour later o depict the balladeer as the worst and most famous American assassin of them all. And the fact that when we get to the LHO part of the play, Johnny enters that scene whistling the Ballad of Booth Pure genius
I’m still not totally convinced that “Assassins” works, even though I appreciate the nuanced and complex message it intends to deliver about the contradictory nature of the American Dream. However, “The Ballad of Booth” is, in my opinion, as good as song as Sondheim ever wrote, both in execution, staging and orchestration and, of course, in words and music. And that’s saying a hell of a lot.
Fascinating that Sondheim could write with such eloquence and wisdom about romantic relationships - yet he barely had any of his own until the last third of his life. All of that understanding must have come at second hand. Did it maybe also come from being gay, whereby he observed the heterosexual world around him but wasn't a part of it? Sometimes a perceptive outsider can discern currents that those swimming in the stream can't.
