Yip Harburg? Jay Gorney? Caryl Brahms? Ned Sherrin? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A prominent songwriter once stated that words are used to make a person think a thought, and music is used to make a person feel a feeling, but the goal of a song is different and more powerful:
A song makes you feel a thought.
This notion has been attributed to U.S. lyricist Yip Harburg who wrote the words for several famous songs including “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (with Jay Gorney), “April in Paris”, and “Over the Rainbow”. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1984 Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin published “Song by Song: The Lives and Work of 14 Great Lyric Writers” which included a section about Yip Harburg. The authors printed an excerpt from a speech delivered by Harburg in 1970 during which he emphasized the potency of combining words and music. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Together they go places … words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought. Together they stand ready to soothe not only the savage breast, but the stubborn mind . . . a new idea can find a soft spot — even under a hard hat.
The greatest romance in the life of the lyricist is when the right word meets the right note; often however, a Park Avenue phrase elopes with a Blecker Street chord resulting in a shotgun wedding and a quickie divorce.
QI believes that this evidence is substantive, and it indicates that Yip Harburg deserves credit for the statement under investigation. Brahms and Sherrin stated that they accessed a tape of Harburg’s 1970 lecture supplied by Maurice Levine2 who organized the lecture series which was titled “Lyrics and Lyricists”.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1988 Sheila Davis published “Successful Lyric Writing: A Step-by-Step Course and Workbook”. Davis reprinted a statement from the speech delivered by Yip Harburg in 1970:3
The power of lyrics to affect, to persuade, and even to incite to action has long been recognized. How that power is transmitted has been memorably described by the great lyricist Yip (“Over the Rainbow”) Harburg. At a tribute to his life work held at The Lyrics and Lyricists Series in New York (12/13/70) he told the audience: “Words make you think a thought; music makes you feel a feeling. But a song makes you feel a thought.
Together they stand ready to soothe not only the savage breast, but the stubborn mind: Barriers fall, hostilities melt and a new idea can find a soft spot under a hard hat.”
At the end of 1990 “The Evening Sun” of Baltimore, Maryland published a piece about well-known figures in the music world who had died during the year. The paper mentioned the passing of lyricist Jay Gorney who had co-written the lyrics of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” with Harburg. Oddly, the paper attributed the quotation to Gorney:4
Another composer gone is Jay Gorney, 93, who came to America as a boy from Russia, wrote the Depression hit “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and said “Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.”
In 1996 “The New Yorker” published a profile of Yip Harburg titled “The Lemon-Drop Kid” which included the following passage:5
Harburg liked to take issue with his times, and he did this by making unacceptable ideas irresistible. “Words make you think thoughts. Music makes you feel a feeling. But a song makes you feel a thought,” he often said. “Barriers fall. Hostilities melt, and a new idea can find a soft spot under a hard hat.”
In conclusion, Yip Harburg deserves credit for the statement he made during a speech in 1970. The attribution to Jay Gorney is unsupported and might stem from confusion with co-lyricist Harburg.
Image Notes: Members of a music band playing and singing in silhouette from Rod Long at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Frederick Freyer whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1984, Song by Song: The Lives and Work of 14 Great Lyric Writers by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, Chapter 8: E. Y. Harburg: ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’, Quote Page 126, Ross Anderson Publications, Egerton, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1984, Song by Song: The Lives and Work of 14 Great Lyric Writers by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, Section: Acknowledgements, Quote Page iv, Ross Anderson Publications, Egerton, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1988 Copyright, Successful Lyric Writing: A Step-by-Step Course and Workbook by Sheila Davis, Stage Three: How to Put it Together, Step 10: The Moral Dimension, Quote Page 149, Writer’s Digest Books, Cincinnati, Ohio. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1990 December 27, The Evening Sun, Requiem for heavyweights (Continuation title: The world of music, from jazz to classical, lost many legends during 1990) by Ernest F. Imhoff (Evening Sun Staff), Start Page E1, Quote Page E5, Column 1, Baltimore, Maryland. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1996 September 30, The New Yorker, The Lemon-Drop Kid by John Lahr, Start Page 68, Quote Page 68, Column 2, Published by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc., New York. (Online New Yorker archive of digital scans) ↩︎