#Liza minelli song serial
#Liza minelli song full

And I also think there’s something more subtly Jewish about this song, with its curious cocktail of carpe diem and que será, its bold dice-roll that’s also sort of a shrug - something reminiscent of Maimonides when he wrote, “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the moshiach, and though he may tarry, still I await him every day.” Not that I need to explain all that much: “New York, New York” is the unofficial anthem of the unofficial capital of Jewish America, written by a Jewish songwriting duo for a musical, an art form that would barely exist at all without Jewish songwriting duos. So far, I haven’t explained why “New York, New York” belongs on a list of the greatest Jewish songs - but then again, I have.

In all likelihood, they will fail and end up back in the town they fled - but so what? If moving to New York and making it big were easy, there’d be no point. No matter how hard they strive, their fate is left up to the city itself. The “I” here could be any ambitious, little-town striver, of course, but in the end it doesn’t matter who is singing.

#Liza minelli song full

Ebb’s lyrics are full of playful oxymorons (old New York, waking up in a city that never sleeps) that culminate in a hypothetical that would be terrifying if not for Kander’s heroic melody: not “I know I’ll make it there” but “ If I can make it there” (italics mine). What is a New York state of mind? A feeling of jittery optimism, maybe a willingness to live with uncertainty an appetite for unresolvable tensions. Audacious and transgressive, Randy Newman’s satire of bigotry still has the power to shock and awe.

#Liza minelli song serial

1 song in America was a flimsy, disco-ish thing called “ Kiss You All Over.”Ībsolutely none of this comes across in “New York, New York,” which was designed to evoke the big band era of 30 years earlier - an era, that is, when you could make a brand-new start of it in old New York and not worry about getting shot by a serial killer. By that time, the city was bankrupt, the blackout riots were still fresh in everybody’s memory, the Son of Sam’s victims were still warm and the No. It did not become a hit until October of the following year, when Frank Sinatra sang it at Radio City Music Hall. “New York, New York,” the theme song from Martin Scorsese’s musical of the same name, starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro, got its first airplay in June 1977. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time.