HAROLD ARLEN : 2 VERY DIFFERENT FEMALE VIEWS ABOUT LOVE & MEN

H arold Arlen: 2 Very Different Female Views About  Love and Men:   Any survey of the songs associated with The Great American Songbook would indicate that affairs of the heart, in all ot heir complexity and contradictions are a central theme of this repertoire. Whether it's about seeking love. finding love, losing love or regaining a lost relationship, hundreds of artfully crafted songs have focused on these eternal emotional matters. Harold Arlen and  his collaborators have written a number of classic songs that examine, very poignantly, how females can express in song contradictory feelings about the men in their lives. For example, in 1954, Arlen and Ira Gershwin wrote a wonderful torch song in " A Star is Born.'"  Judy Garland sang her lament for " The Man That Got Away" in has become an iconic moment in movie history. Gershwin had Garland  singing " The Night is Bitter, The Stars Have Lost Their Glitter , With Hopes You Burn Up, Tomorrow He May Turn Up up etc" It ends with the belief that there is nothing sadder than  " A One Man Woman Looking for the Man that Got Away." One can hear the real heartbreak when Garland and other dramatic singers perform that song.

Earlier, in a 1937 film, Hooray for What" Arlen and E.Y.Harburg wrote a defiant, to -hell -with-you song for a woman who was finished with a man and expressing it very vividly in  "Down With Love."
In this Arlen/,Harburg song, the woman is fed up with all the romantic mush that she once might have believed. It ends with "  Down with Eyes Romantic and Stupid, Down with Sighs, Down with Cupid  Brother lets suff that Dove, Down with Love !" Compared with the despair expressed in " "The Man That Got Away"  this woman is ready to move on with a vengeance.
Both songs are performed by a remarkable singer/actress Audra McDonald who has conquered Broadway as well as the concert stage. In the Arlen/Gershwin song, she is able to convey the genuine hearbreak over the one who got away leaving one with the thought that she might never recover from that loss. In " Down With Love",  Audra McDonald is downright passionate as she denounces the illusory appeal of the  conventional sentiments of romantic love. At the end , she even cynically inserts some examples of songs that perpetuate the  love "mystique." Both performances are magical

LINK  THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY; http://youtu.be/cvBD1_Y77LU

LINK: DOWN  WITH LOVE; http://youtu.be/nYE-gSTwB20