Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

 This week I'd tried to pick something appropriate for the end of the contentious campaign season. Unlike politics though, the arguing in the song actually resolves itself.  The song is the Gershwins’ Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, of the famous “you like potato and I like potahto” fame.  It was written for the 1937 movie Shall We Dance which of course starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers.  George had moved out to Hollywood the previous year hoping to make enough money to devote himself to more serious composition, but alas, he died in July of 1937.  Click on the title here in red to hear my version:

Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

Verse:

Things have come to a pretty pass,

Our romance is growing flat,

For you like this and the other,

While I go for this and that.

Goodness knows what the end will be;

Oh, I don’t know where I’m at…

It looks as if we two will never be one,

Something must be done.

Refrain:

You say eether and I say eyether,

You say neether and I say nyther;

Eether, eyether, neether, nyther,

Let’s call the whole thing off!

You like potato, and I like potahto,

You like tomato, and I like tomahto;

Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto,

Let’s call the whole thing off!

But oh!  If we call the whole thing off,

Then we must part.

And oh! If we ever part then that

Might break my heart.

So if you like pajamas and I like pajahmas

I’ll wear pajamas and give up pajahmas.

For we know we need each other

So we

Better call the calling off off.

Let’s call the whole thing off!