Correction: Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” Has a Major Flaw

      You know the song. You probably like the song. Most do. I did.

      In fact, in an article on Judy Collins for this website, I called “Send in the Clowns,” written by Stephen Sondheim, “a song that makes it hard to imagine that there could be a better song.”

      But I have listened to it some more. I have thought about it some more.

      And I want to apologize and correct the record. I was wrong.

      It is indeed possible to imagine numerous better songs than “Send in the Clowns” because there is an awful line in an important place in “Send in the Clowns.”

      Yes, I’m aware of the gravity of this allegation. It’s like finding an errant brushstroke on the Mona Lisa, discovering a chink in the David, hearing a sour note in Beethoven’s Ninth. Or almost like that.

      But I am now convinced—and I expect to convince you—that despite the fact that “Send in the Clowns” won the Grammy for “Song of the Year” and despite the fact that many of us have loved the song, there is a line in it that does not just fall flat but flat out DOES NOT WORK – indeed makes no goddamned sense.

      And it gets worse, for the line in question is the song’s very last line! Not penultimate, ULTIMATE!

      And just about everybody includes this line in their performances: not just Judy Collins, with her otherwise impeccable taste, but Frank Sinatra, who actually was the first to record the song. Bing Crosby sings it with the ridiculous line intact. They all just “isn’t it rich, aren’t we a pair . . . blah blah blah” along as if the whole damn thing made perfect sense. 

      This song, by far Sondheim’s most popular, has been recorded hundreds of times. And, in the dozen or so versions I’ve listened to, only two singers evade the flawed line: Cher and Barbra Streisand.

      Allow me to share a few positive thoughts on the song, before I make it difficult for you to ever enjoy it again:

      The genre to which the song belongs—unrequited-love songs—is not only particularly crowded but one which Sondheim, known for his own tendency to avoid romantic attachments, might not have been expected to master. Not to worry.

      Until the last line, this cry of a broken heart manages—as does much of the very best art—to both sadden and soar. The trick, I’ll suggest, is its allusiveness, the spareness of the song’s music and of, in particular, its lyrics: “I thought that you’d want what I want. Sorry my dear.”

      Indeed, the bridge is a masterpiece of minimalist architecture:

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines
No one is there.

      So why did Sondheim have to muck the whole thing up at the end?

      Here is the last verse of “Send in the Clowns”:

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer?

       We should bow respectfully, even while aware of the debacle to come, in front of the line that follows. For Sondheim, here, writing for an aging lover, has deftly and poignantly used the song’s carny/theatrical conceit to highlight one of the strengths age saps:

Losing my timing this late in my career.

Then:

But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns

And we’re still good. In circuses and apparently in some forms of theater, clowns bring laughter and distraction: they are “sent in” to cover changes of scene but also to mask awkward occurrences, mishaps.

       But here comes the fateful line. Steel yourself!

Well, maybe next year.

       Huh! We are still waiting for some clowns to show up?

The previous verse of the song had ended with the line—clearly referring to clowns—“Don’t bother they’re here.” In other words, I assume, those two aging former lovers themselves were the clowns. Neat. No? AND THEY WERE HERE!

       But NOW WE ARE BACK TO WAITING FOR THE CLOWNS, AGAIN? Did I miss something? The clowns were here in the previous stanza. Now, between stanzas, they’ve gone away—wintering, perhaps, in Sarasota?

       And where the hell did next year come from?

      The whole second act of this play was supposed to take place in one, long, romance-soaked, magical night. (The play having been based upon Ingmar Bergman’s wondrous film, “Smiles of a Summer’s Night.”) But now we are talking not about later tonight or even tomorrow morning, when we are both sober, but a leap in time to next year?!?

     Wait a minute, you say, Sondheim buff that you are. In the play “A Little Night Music”—this play—the couple in question, Fredrik and Desiree, do get together at the end. 

      Yes, they do, after Fredrik’s 18-year-old wife has left him for his son, and the mismatched couples in the play proceed to get properly matched. But this happens at the end of that magical night, not next year.

      And that happy ending—even the hope of that happy ending—was not available to the woman singing the song at this point in the play. There’s no hint of it in the song, except, vaguely, in that clumsy, inaccurate, incongruous, way-in-the-future, sore thumb of a last line.

      Sondheim himself explained in an interview that this is “a song of regret and anger.” It is not a song of hope. It is not a song that imagines things getting better next year.

      Okay, see the problem?

      I thought so.

      Cher must have. She leaves out the dreadful last line, at the end of the fourth stanza, and ends the song by more or less repeating the end of the third stanza: “Don’t bother we’re here.” Streisand, too, ends her show-bizzy but stirring version with that line snatched from the third stanza. There’s no “next year” for either of them.

      Sondheim himself seems also to have realized something was amiss at the end of his song. In a teaching session he admits that his music mistakenly puts the emphasis on “year” instead of “next.” But, as we’ve seen, the problem is larger than that.

      The great composer has said this song “was one of the quickest I’ve ever written. I wrote it in two days.” I’m all for flurries of inspiration, and there sure is a lot that is inspired in “Send in the Clowns.” But let’s be honest: the last line of one of Sondheim’s otherwise great songs could have used a lot more work.

      How about:

Losing my timing this late in my career
But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns “It’s laughter I hear” or “Could it be more clear?” or “As we disappear”?

      And so, having gushed about the song in that article I wrote on Judy Collins, I am guilty of having given praise without reservation.       

      This late in my career.

      My fault, my dears.