SONGWRITING AND 'SIXTEEN' - ONE WORD MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Maybe the turning point of my life was a couple of weekends ago when I met the son of Robert Sherman the songwriter. I mentioned that I was an author named Angela Lansbury and an aspiring songwriter and the son said, ‘My father wrote the songs for a film in which the actress of that name starred.’

Robert Sherman is also a painter and I looked at his website, http://www.robertshermanart.com/

Robert Sherman and his brother Richard had a father who was a songwriter and Robert was writing songs as a child and had written a musical by the time he was in his teens.

His songs included numerous award winning hits, including those from Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and numerous tunes for Disney including the theme park classic It’s A Small World. Plus, one of my favourites – ‘Sixteen’!

Sixteen is ‘my song’, an ongoing joke with a good friend of mine who introduced me to Karaoke, William Brougham, who I met through Toastmasters International in London (he’s now in Australia – a radio newsreader with a second career as an actor making appearances on shows such as Home & Away).

William always says he will sing Sixteen for me. I am no longer sixteen.

I wrote to William:

You know a song is perfect when you change one word and it's ruined.

'You're sixty, you're beautiful and you're mine,' just doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?

Later I added a postscript to my email:

I looked at what I wrote again and my comment on the whole being greater than the some of the parts was true.

When you try to re-write Shakespeare to show you understand it in an O level comprehension your version never matches the rhythm and drama of the original.

'To be or not to be; that is the question,' is often quoted.

'To live or not to live, that's the decision which I must make,' is just not as memorable.

Humour aside. Firstly, the obvious joke in the change to the song is the meaning of the words sixteen and sixty.

A sixteen-year-old is generally considered more beautiful than a sixty-year-old.

Unless a song about a sixty year old is written as a tribute, an anniversary song. But the jumpy pop song music would not fit; the original song has to be sung by a sixteen-year-old boy, or eighteen-year-old, or somebody young-sounding, otherwise it suggests cradle-snatching and sounds like he's a predator.

If the sixty-year-old woman is 'his', the song has to be sung by a sixty-year-old man, or an eighty-year-old man (who might be thrilled to have a lively sixty-year-old woman.

For an older singer you would need a slower, more nostalgic Fifties style song sung as a duet sung by an ageing Frank Sinatra, or a big band tune.)

But the metre is changed too.
Sixteen has emphasis on the second syllable, whilst sixty has emphasis on the first.

Maybe that doesn't matter.

Also sixteen was age of consent so it adds sexual allure and desire on the part of the singer, adding an edge of anticipation and desire, plus triumph, to the word 'mine'.If I could find the email of the composer I'd write and ask him to create a new song for his former fans from the Sixties who are no longer sixteen. The contact number on the site is for the art sales in California. He's now living in London.