Dearie's version of Manhattan was the one that hooked me, and might have been the first I heard. It's so lushly romantic that it was years before I understood that almost every line in the song is a joke about some unpleasant aspect of living in the New York boroughs in the 1920s. The line about Canarsie (from a chorus which Blossom doesn't perform) would not be funny to most people living today who don't know about the raw sewage spewing into Jamaica Bay and the unregulated dumping that the neighborhood was known for 100 years ago. I took the "balmy breezes" and the sounds of "sweet pushcarts" at face value when Blossom cooed them, not being familiar with Delancy Street in July during the 1920s. Now I know that theater audiences would recognized every line as ironic and chuckled their way through the whole song. I'm not sure the song is so much about a couple in love finding actual joy in the activities depicted, rather than saying "this place is brutal, but at least we've got each other."
Dearie's version of Manhattan was the one that hooked me, and might have been the first I heard. It's so lushly romantic that it was years before I understood that almost every line in the song is a joke about some unpleasant aspect of living in the New York boroughs in the 1920s. The line about Canarsie (from a chorus which Blossom doesn't perform) would not be funny to most people living today who don't know about the raw sewage spewing into Jamaica Bay and the unregulated dumping that the neighborhood was known for 100 years ago. I took the "balmy breezes" and the sounds of "sweet pushcarts" at face value when Blossom cooed them, not being familiar with Delancy Street in July during the 1920s. Now I know that theater audiences would recognized every line as ironic and chuckled their way through the whole song. I'm not sure the song is so much about a couple in love finding actual joy in the activities depicted, rather than saying "this place is brutal, but at least we've got each other."