Album: Bye Bye Birdie (1960)
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Songfacts®:

  • Like "Put On A Happy Face," this is a song from the 1960 Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie, and next to it, is probably the best known. Written by the same team of lyricist Lee Adams and composer Charles Strouse, it is not to be confused with any later song of the same name.
  • Translations vary, but the Greek philosopher Socrates (c469–399BC) is said to have written:

    "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

    There is nothing in this song with which he would have taken issue.
  • In the 1963 film version it is performed in the family kitchen by Maureen Stapleton, Paul Lynde, Dick Van Dyke and Bryan Russell as the characters Mama Mae, Harry, Albert and Randolph. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 3

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