![]() ![]() “When I tell people that I’m working on Harold Arlen’s music, they sort of stare at me blankly, not recognizing his name,” Frisch said. “The song’s mix of hope and anxiety has allowed people to read into it their own concerns,” he said, noting that the lyrics are general enough that one would not know the singer was standing in a farmyard with her dog.įrisch defines “Over the Rainbow” as a classic “I want” song, delivered at the outset of a show or film to “express the desires that will motivate the protagonist’s actions.” Freed wanted a ballad that would rival a popular film song of the time, “Someday My Prince Will Come” from Walt Disney’s 1937 animated hit Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. One factor of the song’s appeal that Frisch cites is the universality of a childhood desire to get away or escape. ![]() “It might not seem obvious that a song performed by a young girl at the beginning of a fantasy movie would take on a life of its own,” said Walter Frisch, a professor of music whose new book, Arlen and Harburg’s Over the Rainbow, traces the work’s history. In 2001, “Over the Rainbow” was voted the greatest song of the 20th century in a joint survey by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America. It can’t hurt.” More than 75 years later, the film and the song by composer Harold Arlen and lyricist Yip Harburg are cultural touchstones. Mayer, “The song stays-or I go,” to which Mayer replied: “Let the boys have the damn song. For an advance screening, MGM executives had removed “Over the Rainbow” because they felt it slowed down the film.Īssociate producer Arthur Freed stepped in, telling studio head Louis B. When Judy Garland went over the rainbow as Dorothy Gale in the classic 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz, she almost left without singing what was to become her signature number.
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