So there’s this ad on telly over here in good ol’ Blighty. It uses a song, which is probably very famous but which, frankly, I can’t be bothered to look up, 'cos it irritates the hell outta me.
The song starts:
“Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side?”
So that set me thinking. I can’t think of a single song about rainbows and what’s on the other side. I’m quite prepared to be proved wrong. So let’s have them. All those “so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side.”
I’d forgotten that it was from The Muppet Movie. I probably loved it in that. But not in the version in this ad, with some woman singing it in that annoying, little girl, slightly lispy, ‘fragile’ and, I guess, supposed-to-be-ultra-feminine voice. Ugh!
Anyway, the reference to Somewhere Over the Rainbow? My point exactly. It’s not about “what’s on the other side”. It’s about what’s over the rainbow. Completely different. For a start, the point being that you have to be dead to go there.
#1 Over the Rainbow with Yip Harburg
BBC R4 - Over the Rainbow with Yip Harburg -128 kb…
In this interesting documentary broadcaster Stephen Evans explores the life and work of lyricist Yip Harburg, who became known as the ‘social conscience’ of Broadway, and discovers his contemporary relevance.
Harburg became famous for writing the lyrics to The Wizard of Oz and the anthem of the Great Depression era, Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? His strong socialist views led him to become a victim of the infamous Hollywood anti-communist blacklist in the 1950s.
The rainbow was entirely Harburg’s contribution to the festivities; it wasn’t in the novel. The Beeb programme is pretty interesting. I hadn’t known that Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? was so huge, & seen as the defining song of its era.
Harburg also wrote the lyrics for Finian’s Rainbow. But I can’t agree with fearfaoin about Over the Rainbow being schmaltzy when I consider it a true gem with perfectly matched lyrics and music… and, yes, I’m being serious!
So, essentially, I appear to be right: there isn’t a single “song about rainbows and what’s on the other side” unless you count Rainbow Connection itself, and even that isn’t really; it’s a song about “songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side”.
This is what happens when all the existential questions (“Why does the sun keep on shining?”, “Who has seen the wind?”, etc.) have already been asked, and songwrights are allowed to get away with riding roughshod over the facts to cover their deficit. You are being lied to. Deceived. The wool pulled over your eyes. Hornswoggled. Pwned.
but WN just keeps grindin’em out… ya know… “Traditional” 
