Lieber and Stoller are one of the most prolific, talented and successful songwriting teams in history. Last Saturday’s amusement featured one of their lesser-known songs; tonight’s selection is their most unusual song, a definite singularity for the team that wrote Hound Dog and Stand By Me. Based on Disillusionment, a 19th century short story by German writer Thomas Mann, the song manages to take a narrator’s world-weary, almost apathetic outlook and metamorphose it into something resembling liberation and spiritual emancipation.
A brilliantly audacious song, and an improbable Top 40 hit. From 1969, here’s North Dakota Native Miss Peggy Lee singing Is That All There Is?
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And so sweet.