"You're the Top" is a Cole Porter song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. It is about a man and a woman who take turns complimenting each other. The best-selling version was Paul Whiteman's Victor single, which made the top five. It was the most popular song from Anything Goes at the start with hundreds of parodies. The lyrics are particularly notable because they offer a snapshot as to what was highly prized in the mid-1930s and demonstrate Porter's rhyming ability. Some of the lyrics were re-written by P. G. Wodehouse for the British version of Anything Goes.
People and items referenced in the song
The following is a list of many of the references made in the song:
P. G. Wodehouse anglicised it for the British version of Anything Goes. Amongst other changes, he altered two lines from "You’re an O’Neill drama / You’re Whistler’s mama!" to "You’re Mussolini / You’re Mrs Sweeny")
Versions of the song
Ethel Merman sang it in the original 1934 production of Anything Goes.
Sutton Foster: In the 2011 Broadway revival of Anything Goes.
In the third season episode "Heart" of the television showGlee, actors Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stokes Mitchell sang one of the verses to this song. However, a full version featuring both was released as a single.
The "Washington vs. the Bunny" episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show features a version of the song performed for Laura Petrie by her very young son Ritchie. In that version, Ritchie mistakenly alters the lyrics from "You're the Mona Lisa" to "You're the Mommy Lisa".
The song played a major role in the M*A*S*H episode "The Joker Is Wild" whereupon the loser of a "jokeoff" in the 4077th had to sing the song without his bottoms in the mess hall. Alan Alda's character Hawkeye ultimately had to make good on said promise.
A personalized version of this song was featured in season seven of Gilmore Girls, sung by Edward Herrmann and Kelly Bishop to their onscreen granddaughter played by Alexis Bledel in honor of her graduation from Yale. It features such lines as: "You're the top/You've graduated. You're the top/Your grandparents are elated."
In John Mortimer's novel Paradise Postponed and the television series of the same name : A rendering of the song by a fictitious performer, Pinky Pinkerton, includes the line, "You're my Lady Grace", which signifies Lady Grace Fanner in the story.
In the 1992 film Passed Away, Father Hallahan sings this song during a wake.
Parodies
Porter biographer William McBrien wrote that at the height of its popularity in 1934 to 1935 it had become a "popular pastime" to create parodies of the lyrics. Porter, who himself had called the song "just a trick" the public would get bored by was flooded with hundreds of parodies with one reportedly written by Irving Berlin. Despite the "ribald" nature of some of the parodies, McBrien believes few, including a King Kong parody, were written by Porter or Berlin. The American Cabaret Theatre biographical musical Cole & Noel had the line "I'm talkin' King Kong's penis" in the performance of the song.
