Blue Skies

Written: 1926

Words and Music by: Irving Berlin

Written for: Betsy
(Broadway show with score primarily by Rodgers and Hart, 1927)

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"Blue Skies"

Critics Corner || Lyrics Lounge

Richard Rodgers,
Musical Stages: An Autobiography New York: Random House, 1975
(Da Capo paper bound ed., 2002, pictured above).

It really didn't take a trained ear to appreciate that the Berlin's contribution [to Betsy], "Blue Skies," was a great piece of songwriting easily superior to anything Larry and I had written for the production, but at the time I was crushed by having someone else's work interpolated into our score. . . . A few words in advance might have eased our wounded pride, but Ziegfeld could never be accused of having the human touch . . . . No, Ziegfeld was not a nice man" (Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 96, hard bound ed.).

In 1927, Al Jolson sang "Blue Skies" in The Jazz Singer, the first talking movie, and in 1946, Bing Crosby performed it in the movie Blue Skies. See the Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet for other notable performances

Click here to read the lyrics for "Blue Skies" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald
on the album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book.
(To hear Ella sing it go to the Main Stage above.
Her version includes not only the first verse
but the second, which follows the refrainand concludes the song.
In fact, she sings the words exactly as Berlin wrote them.

The second verse returns the tension to the song that seemed to have disappeared with the gray skies of the first verse. The singer comes full circle. Doubt clouds her resolve expressed so unequivocally at the end of the refrain: "Nothing but blue skies / From now on," a resolve deriving from the idea that "when you're in love" only good things happen. The second verse brings her back to that earlier point (in the first verse) when it wasn't the skies that were blue, it was she. In fact, most of the second verse has the singer listing possibilities that could make her blue again--make her care," fret" or "mind." Apparently she is experiencing reality creep. Finally, however, she returns to the earlier optimism of the refrain by doing her best to put a smiling face on things, to make herself resemble a smiling blue sky and not someone who has the blues: "I should smile-- / That's exactly what I do."

The complete, authoritative lyrics for "Blue Skies'" can be found in:

Robert Kimball and Linda Emmet. The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin. New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 2001/Applause Theater and Cinema Books, 2005, paperback edition.

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