The Way You Look Tonight

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My cover of the classic song, The Way You Look Tonight, first made famous by Fred Astaire in the 1936 movie, Swing Time. I'm singing to a karaoke arrangement based on Michael Bublé's 2003 bossa nova version of the song. I also added a piano part to the instrumental section.

THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT

Someday,
when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow
just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight.

Lovely,
with your smile so warm,
And your cheeks so soft,
There is nothing for me
but to love you
and the way you look tonight.

With each word
your tenderness shows,
making my fear depart.
And that laugh
that wrinkles your nose
touches my foolish heart.

Oh but you're lovely. . .
Never, ever change!
Keep that breathless charm.
Won't you please arrange it?
cause I love you —
just the way you look tonight.

INSTRUMENTAL
(featuring guitar and Chris on piano)

With each word
your tenderness grows,
making my fear depart.
And that laugh
that wrinkles your nose
touches my foolish heart.

Lovely. . .
Don't you ever change!
Keep that breathless charm.
Won't you please arrange it?
cause I love you —
just the way you look tonight.

LYRICS

Dorothy Fields, who wrote the words for The Way You Look Tonight (for which she won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936) is one of the great lyricists, writing lyrics for over four hundred songs including such well-known ones as A Fine Romance, On the Sunny Side of the Street, Pick Yourself Up, and Big Spender. But even great lyricists aren't perfect, and her phrase, "tearing my fear apart":

With each word
your tenderness shows,
tearing my fear apart.

is not a great choice as it injects a rather aggressive image ("tearing apart") into an otherwise very sweet song — love as a machine gun or machete! Not very "tender". When I hear singers sing this line, I cringe a little. Most singers just live with the words of a song, like it or not, particularly when it's a very familiar, classic song. But because I'm a songwriter as well as a singer, I tasked myself to find a phrase with a similar meaning, and which rhymed, but which is in line with the gentle words in the rest of the song. So here's what I ended up singing instead:

With each word
your tenderness shows,
making my fear depart.

In fact, my ideal would have been to use words that suggested fear melting or dissolving because of that tenderness — but I couldn't find a way to do that and also get a rhyme for "heart" in there, so this was the next best choice.

MUSIC

Instrumental Bridge — The karaoke arrangement of the song feature a guitar solo:

It's very sweet, but — to my "song arranger" ears — the guitar sounded a little "lonely"; plus, it's harmonizing with the song melody, but you wouldn't necessarily be aware of that, if you weren't a musician. So I wrote a simple piano part for the instrumental bridge, that keeps the guitar company, and also starts off with the song melody:

Musical influences — I often draw on many different musical ideas from singers and songs. Creating this cover was no exception. Here are just some of the influences I'm consciously aware of.

• Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 — Sergio Mendes showed me how bossa nova singing doesn't have to be purely cool — as in, say, The Girl From Ipanema:

  That cool style is fine for a song likeThe Girl From Ipanema, which is essentially just about physical attraction. But for a heart-felt song like The Way You Look Tonight, you run the danger of not touching people's hearts at all if your singing get too light, breezy, and cool. Even Michael Bublé, whose bossa nova arrangement I borrowed here, sang this song with just a little too much cool and a little less heart than I would choose. It's a danger in singing bossa nova! But fortunately it is possible to bring real force and energy to a bossa nova song (without losing the lilting bossa nova style), as Sergio Mendes taught me, in playful, lively passages like this one, from The Look of Love:

  and this one, from The Fool on the Hill:

  That strongly influenced (in subtle ways) how I sang certain parts of this song, like this playful section, that builds to a full-hearted explosion of "cause I love you":

  
  

• Billy Joel — Here and there in my singing, I can also hear a touch of Billy Joel singing Just the Way You Are. It's a not too surprising influence, both because of the similarity in the words and the similar rhythm, which Joel's drummer, Liberty DeVitto, described as a "crazy rhythm that started out as a samba beat, like a bossa nova with a brush and a stick."

  
  
  
• Steve Miller (!) — I created a little non-verbal vocal intro for the song, to set the mood with a "far away", dreamy feeling to match the opening word of the song: "Someday". Here was my first version of that intro:

  I liked it, but felt it was missing something. As I was pondering what might be missing, the intro to a Steve Miller song (Swingtown) popped into my head:

  That jump at the beginning of his little non-verbal vocal intro — which jumps up an octave — literally "jump starting" his melody, and his song altogether. So I added the same octave-climbing "jump start" to my melody, for the same reason — to give the intro an extra little "kick":

  Which just goes to show that, if you keep an open mind, all kinds of additional influences and sources may become available for your creative process.