The Music of Last Night... and the Night Before That...

While Elton John launched the Grammys in the U.S., Andrew Lloyd Webber graced Londoners with a new excerpt from Love Never Dies (aka Phantom II. Still not sure if Phantom's part of the official title or not). As it turns out, this extract from the score was extracted from a different score. Yes, Lloyd Webber's hoping yet again our memories have faded (except for the tabby tuner "Memory," naturally; ALW needs his residuals).

What is currently "Love Never Dies" was birthed as "The Heart is Slow to Learn," as I once posted. Quick recap: The sequel stalled, so ALW rewrote the song as "Our Kind of Love" for The Beautiful Game. When that lost money, the show was rejiggered, and "Love" excised. And so the wheel turns. Now we are back at the start, and the lyrics have changed again. But for the better?

The ending chorus, version 1.0:

I'll never love as I have loved you

Why is love cruel? I wish I knew

Say what you will, it doesn't matter

Until I die, there's only you

Then, refashioned for Irish nationalists:

All kinds of love bring us together

Causes the broken heart to mend

People must love, now and forever

There's only one love in the end

And now for sadder-but-wiser Christine Daae:

Love never dies, love will continue

Love keeps on beating when you're gone

Love never dies once it is in you

Life may be fleeting, love lives on

The melodic jump to a soprano B-flat, however, virtually obliterates "Life may be fleeting." Why does Glenn Slater introduce new words so high in her vocal range? You're bound to hear "Love may be fleeting," then be puzzled when the song wraps with "love lives on."

Eh, common mistake. Slater does use the word "love" twenty-six times. Could it be an omen for the years Phantom Never Dies will run? Or for how many reprises we'll hear of "Love Never Dies," version 3.0, before the curtain? Just no disco beat, please. That's all I ask, Andrew.

(For maximum ALW water-cooler mockery, listen to the main title of Billy Wilder's black comedy The Apartment and note the similarity.)