Something Just Broke
Something Just Broke
#1Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/11/16 at 3:46pm
Something just spoke
something just made a little dent
Something just broke-
Only for a moment.
Something got bent
Something just left a little mark.
Something just went a little dark.
Something just went.
I was scared--
What would follow...
Something to be mended.
Made me wonder who we are...
Something we'll have to weather--
Bringing us all together--
If only for a moment..
I'll remember it forever...
Nothing has really ended-
Only just been suspended...
'Cause something just stirred...
Something just woke
Something just spoke,
Something I wish I hadn't heard,
Something bewildering occurred.
Fix it up fast,
Please-
Till it's just smoke
Till it's only "Something just passed"--
Nothing that will last.
Nothing but the moment...
Just an awful moment..
But something just--
After this weeks events it's amazing to realize how Sondheim really has lyrics that can be related to most situations.
#2Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/11/16 at 3:54pm
To be honest, my initial reaction to this post was very dark, and might get me in trouble if I typed it, and not what you intended at all.
#3Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/11/16 at 11:55pm
I do find myself appreciating this song more and more. Though it has attracted crtiticism here for seeming out of place in the show. Do we still think so?
"You can't overrate Bernadette Peters. She is such a genius. There's a moment in "Too Many Mornings" and Bernadette doing 'I wore green the last time' - It's a voice that is just already given up - it is so sorrowful. Tragic. You can see from that moment the show is going to be headed into such dark territory and it hinges on this tiny throwaway moment of the voice." - Ben Brantley (2022)
"Bernadette's whole, stunning performance [as Rose in Gypsy] galvanized the actors capable of letting loose with her. Bernadette's Rose did take its rightful place, but too late, and unseen by too many who should have seen it" Arthur Laurents (2009)
"Sondheim's own favorite star performances? [Bernadette] Peters in ''Sunday in the Park,'' Lansbury in ''Sweeney Todd'' and ''obviously, Ethel was thrilling in 'Gypsy.'' Nytimes, 2000
#4Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/12/16 at 12:19am
I never hated it, but I admit I found it sort of out-of-sync when I first saw it in the show (the original LA production).
Maybe we were just used to the score without it. Because it rather deftly balances "How I Saved Roosevelt", the only other song that is sung by characters other than the assassins themselves.
Perhaps the problem is in the construction of the show. (I've seen a half-dozen productions and taught the play for years in a dramaturgy class.) ASSASSINS already had three endings: "Another National Anthem" (the Balladeer is run off the stage, seeming to end the central Balladeer v. Booth conflict); Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates LBJ (the assassination most of us remember and the seeming objective of all the assassins); and then the reprise of "Everybody's Got the Right" (a "dark reprise", if I understand the term which I first encountered here).
Add "Something Just Broke" to the mix and what reads like three endings in the original published edition feels like four endings in production. That isn't to say there's anything wrong with any of the four scenes/songs, just that an already and deliberately episodic play may feel like coitus interruptus by the fourth ending.
Which is a shame, because I think it's a beautiful lyric.
#5Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/12/16 at 2:45am
It really is a beautiful and powerful lyric, I think it's one of the most unique songs in the score. I combined individual solo lyrics together in my post, so it may read like a bit of a mishmash.
funhamilton_rent
Featured Actor Joined: 9/26/15
#7Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/12/16 at 11:16am
I always thought the music sounded like it was written for Passion. I agree, I was just used to the score without it. But the lyrics are powerful and more relevant than ever.
"Broadway...I'll lick you yet!"
jimmycurry01
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/28/05
#8Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/12/16 at 12:28pm
I think it is one of my two favorite songs on the show. I never even vindictive it not being a good fit, mostly because I agree that it is a great sing to balance How I Saved Roosevelt. The country's reaction to one man's attempt to ba hero is great, because no one seems him as a hero at all. It just leaves pain and introspective sorrow. I like the emotion it brings to the show, and I like how it counters to the jovial feeling of How I Saved Roisevelt.
indytallguy
Broadway Star Joined: 7/13/08
#9Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/12/16 at 12:41pmI like it as a bit of a pause, making us reflect on all that has been going on.
#10Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/12/16 at 6:19pm
Gaveston, sweetheart, you gave me the one good laugh of the day today when I read--
"Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates LBJ (the assassination most of us remember)..." Now that would have been an assassination to remember!
For the record, I loved "Something Just Broke" the first time I heard it, and then really loved it in that LA production that Gaveston also remembers. It fills in a desperately needed human perspective on all those heartless acts recounted in the show. It's a much icier show without it, and I for one would have been happy to wrap up the show after this number and do without the unimaginative "Everybody's Got the Right" reprise that's there now.
Fan123
Broadway Star Joined: 8/30/08
#11Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/13/16 at 1:42am
I'm no great fan of the song, but I'm not sure if I even know why myself. I might be biased against it because I too am used to the score without it. For me at least, this song might actually work better if 'How I Saved Roosevelt' wasn't also in the score, given that HISR encourages the audience to sneer at the general public's reaction to an (attempted) assassination. It seems that SJB works for others precisely due to that contrast though. The show, to me, is largely about forcing us to uncomfortably recognise some characteristics of the assassins in ourselves/everyone; not for the purpose of glorifying the assassins, but to force us to think about some (hopefully) latent dark aspects of ourselves. Maybe 'Something Just Broke' is a bit too safe for this show, allowing us to play the good guy again and identify with the unambiguously nice people. Sure, 'Assassins' is the kind of show that breaks its own established rules, but that might be one too far for me. I don't know. Maybe the fact that the song seems jarring and out of place to many audience members (including me) is intentional, given that it's the only 'sane' song in the show.
And yeah, I'm not really into the 'Everybody's Got The Right' reprise either, although I don't hate it. This might be mild sacrilege around these parts, but I've always been a bit impatient with Sondheim's and his collaborators' tendency to end shows with a reprise of the first number. It generally feels to me to be an underestimation of the audience's intelligence, assuming we need to be beaten over the head with point of the show and the changes that have been wrought since the first pass of the number. Also, it's boring. And I don't need a musical theatre score to be 'symmetrical' as if it's a circle drawn on a page.
The Other One
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/1/08
#12Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/13/16 at 7:34am
" Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates LBJ (the assassination most of us remember and the seeming objective of all the assassins);"
Hmm. I don't remember that at all.
#13Something Just Broke
Posted: 11/13/16 at 5:05pm
Plus, I'm wondering how many theatergoers today personally remember the day JFK was assassinated? I certainly do-- in November 1963 I was in second grade. School had let out as soon as the news of the shooting spread, around 1 or 1:30pm. I remember walking home the half mile from the bus-stop to find my mom actually weeping at the ironing board while watching the tv set-- pretty much like the character in "Something Just Broke" hanging sheets on the line. For 2 days we watched the news on our black and white tv, through Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald, all the way to the funeral cortege with that riderless horse making its way slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue, and little John-John's heartbreaking salute.
Hearing "Something Just Broke" decades later nailed that emotion like no other song in the cannon could. There's no understanding of the assassins' story without understanding this moment for the country at large.
