WHY DO THE WRONG PEOPLE TRAVEL - Noel Coward with orchestra conducted by Peter Matz
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- ** To see the lyrics, click SHOW MORE ** - From the Broadway musical "Sail Away" 1961
Composer and lyricist: Noel Coward - Piano and musical arrangement: Peter Matz
Travel they say improves the mind,
An irritating platitude, which frankly, entre nous,
Is very far from true.
Personally I've yet to find that longitude and latitude
Can educate those scores of monumental bores
Who travel in groups and herds and troupes
Of varying breeds and sexes
Till the whole world reels to shouts and squeals
And the clicking of Rolliflexes.
Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel
When the right people stay back home?
What compulsion compels them and who the hell tells them
To drag their cans to Zanzibar, instead of staying quietly in Omaha.
The Taj Mahal, the Grand Canal
And the sunny French Riviera
Would be less oppressed if the Middle West
Would settle for somewhere rather nearer
Please do not think that I criticize or cavil at a genuine urge to roam
But why, oh why do the wrong people travel
When the right people stay back home,
And mind their business
When the right people stay back home,
With Cinerama
When the right people stay back home,
I'm merely asking
Why the right people stay back home.
Just when you think romance is ripe it rather sharply dawns on you
That each sweet serenade is for the tourist trade.
Any attractive native type who resolutely fawns on you
Will give as her address American Express.
There isn't a rock between Bangkok and the beaches of Hispianola
That does not recoil from suntan oil and the gurgle of Coca Cola.
Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel
When the right people stay back home?
What explains this mass mania to leave Pennsylvania
And clack around like flocks of geese
Demanding dry martinis on the isles of Greece
On the smallest street, where the gourmets meet,
They invariably fetch up
And it's hard to make them accept a steak
that isn't served rare and smeared with ketchup
Millions of tourists are churning up the gravel
While they gaze at Saint Peters Dome,
But why, oh why do the wrong people travel
When the right people stay back home,
And eat hot doughnuts
When the right people stay back home,
With all that lettuce
When the right people stay back home,
Won't someone tell me
Why the right people stay back home.
Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel
When the right people stay back home?
What peculiar obsessions inspire those processions
Of families from Houston Tex
With all those cameras around their necks?
They will take a train or an aeroplane
For an hour on the Costa Brava
And they'll see Pomeii
On the only day
When it's up to its ass in molten lava!
It would take years to unravel, ravel ravel
Every impulse that make them roam
But why, oh why do the wrong people travel,
When the right people stay back home
With all that Kleenex
When the right people stay back home
With all the Kennedys
When the right people stay back home
I sometimes wonder why the right,
Yes the right people stay back home
Noel Coward
He’s rolling the hell out of those r’s
Dear Noel was well known for rolling his rrrrrrr`s... particularly in Jamaica... especially after one or two beef infused Bullshots. He would often shout "bottoms up". 😶
Love this rendition of this song
I have never heard another rendition!
He was so wonderful. There will never, ever be another YOU.
A song from the old world that mentions modern day stuff such as "Kleenex" and "Coca-Cola" ...fascinating!
Kleenex just turned 100. Coca-Cola is almost 140. An impressive legacy of success! ... If Noel Coward was alive today, he'd be 124.
I could listen to him all night.
Thank you - how lovely !. He certainly had a talent to amuse.
Absolutely BRILLIANT!!!
This could be taken as a reflection by one of the Wrong people, mistaking himself for one of the Rights who happened to be temporarily among the Wrongs, as he'd need to travel himself to know who's travelling; unless he was at home reading the Society Column, containing the news as to who was leaving for a cruise, etc..
Killed it in concert in Vegas! Hottest ticket in town. Then Marlene Dietrich did her one ‘man’ show with conducting by her boy toy Burt Bacharach. Later in her tour she fell onstage off her stool and literally crawled with white gloves fingers off stage. But she milked it all the way to Rio in Brazil. Recorded live at the first Copacabana!
Absolutely rrrrrrisible!
And the message still applies, albeit in a slightly different context of "class".
I bet nearly everyone misses this: he’s absolutely poking fun at the upper crust in nearly all of his lyrics, that’s the sense I get-it’s so funny when people associate him with “pure class“ and so on, when he’s actually giving various people a good drubbing- harmlessly, through song lyrics!
I saw the world premiere of the musical from which this comes when I was a 12 year old in Boston, Massachusetts. Later on I wrote my thesis on Noël Coward. He was utterly Frank about his lower middle class roots, even if he did number the Queen Mother and the Mountbattens among his friends later on in life.
"With all that lettuce" indeed! I say the same about what the Yanks do to tacos. (Nevermind what they do "with all that Kleenex!")
Where's Hispianola(sic)?
Hispianola is an island in the Caribbean archipelago, known as the Greater Antilles. It is the most populous island in the West Indies. Kind Regards Tonny Nielsen
@@MrFrogfreak Thanks, I know you mean well, but please read carefully what I wrote (note the 'sic') - which is what NC sang - and then consider that, maybe, he meant Hispaniola which is the island you described :-)
@@MrEurocrat THANKS Simon, I am very busy editing and uploading so I did not catch it right away :)
@@MrEurocrat In fact the Island of Hispaniola is shared between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
@@MrFrogfreak The west side of Hispaniola is Haiti -- the east side is the Dominican Republic. You can see the border between the two on Google Maps even without a drawn line. The DR side is green with forest, the Haitian side is largely brown because of deforestation.
He who said, contrary to my own opinion, that Gertrude Lawrence wasn't at all pretty, wasn't except when still v young, at all a pretty boy himself. And again unlike Gertie, his hands were also not pretty. Too thin. Hers, like her eyes, were so beautiful. As for talent, Coward was OVER-ENDOWED! Thx for this charming song.
He was right about Gertrude Lawrence. She acted on and off stage as a beautiful woman so convincingly that we saw her beauty.
@@kathinka5979 Dream on.
3D3.
.
oh i say.... chap's a frightful snob !
I agree with you!
That 'Chap' is a bloody genius who was taking the piss as usual dear!
Personally, I don’t think a Britisher is in an advantageous position to criticise American cuisine. I’d also conquer half the world to add some flavour to that fish and chips.
I've ' Liked ' your comment, as I enjoy reading a different point of view.
(From the U.K.)
All you need is vinegar on fish and chips, dear, and Noel Coward triumphed over a very ordinary background by sheer hard work and talent.
Class. Just pure class.
Now nearly everybody is staying at home, alas...
A covid anthem?
I feel this so much. Too often do we see so-called celebrities posting on Instagram photos from some earthly paradise, and I often think to myself "What have these dudes ever done to have all that money to travel? They can't even appreciate the culture and history of the place. They only seek malls... Expensive hotels with spa, they never even care about what they are visiting..."
This song was written for Elaine Stritch, who nailed every joke and then some! Elsewhere on UA-cam, you can find the original Broadway cast recording, as well as the live one from many years later in "Elaine Stritch at Liberty." It's fascinating that a song which seems so perfectly suited to Coward's veddy proper English style is equally at home with Strich's VERY American, down-to-earth manner! NB: The version from the original cast recording currently posted is the "expurgated" one: "clans" is substituted for "cans," and a key word is obliterated by an orchestral blast in the lyric: "And they'll see Pompeii / On the only day / When it's up to its ass in molten lava." (The complete lyric WAS on the Capitol LP issued back when.) Go for Stritch's "... at Liberty" version!
Perfect!
What compulsion compels them
And who the hell tells them
To drag their cans to Zanzibar
Instead of staying quietly in Omaha? For one reason,said Bill Joel, sell your own guitar to travel to Zanzibar
Kennedys. No apostrophe. Thanks for the work. Love this number.
I removed the apostrophe ! YES great lyrics thanks to Noels description of general human behaviour, which is in a class by itself - A bit like his "Time and again" and "I wonder what happened to him". With kind Regards Tonny Nielsen
Why only correct that mistake?
It's all true. There is this group of Japanese tourists...................
One my fav songs ever! Thanks!
The first time I have heard this. SuperB1
Well, that reference to Kennedys puts this in the early 60s. Seems he doesn't like Americans very much, especially those he meets in those overseas vacation spots. I don't think this is good-natured. It's superior in every way. Oh, wait! I'm one of Coward's "right people" because I do not travel abroad.
FUNNY GUY,
The greatest.
love, love, love him.
I would change one line. I don't think they want steaks served rare but rather Trump style - well done and smeared with ketchup!
you are an idiot
What is wrong with ketchup, if only to cover the strong, sad taste of beef?
By all means, pleae stay home. No one needs your snobbery
Ooh the little trumpies are fuming again!
A Genius of Stylish lyrics, to be sure...but just a bit.."..Sooo, Piss-Elegant'.....and always just a bit too much..
That’s his brand. It’s like saying a rapper is too urban.