How many points for understanding the eggs reference?

It should come as no surprise that I am a bit overzealous about the American Songbook. So the idea that “I Get a Kick Out of You” is a Frank Sinatra song, mentioned in a recent comment, is not exactly wrong, given that it is one of his signature tunes, but first and foremost it is a Cole Porter song. The analogy here might be, when you get on an elevator, the 1001 Strings version of “Yesterday” (which at one point, and this may still be true, was the most recorded song ever) is indeed a signature tune of Muzak, but first and foremost it is a Paul McCartney song (or, arguably, a Beatles song, but that’s neither here nor there to anyone who knows their Beatles at this point—scrambled eggs, anyone?).

Porter is one of those amazing people who did lyrics and music both. These are two rather different skills, and it is unusual to find anyone who can do both well, although in rock music it is not unusual to find people who can do both adequately. As a rule, though, one will be excellent, the other rote. Dylan, for instance, didn’t break much ground in harmonics but knocked off the odd memorable phrase now and then. I mention rock because the 60s were the dawning age of the creative performer, and if a rock group or single expected serious consideration, original self-generated material was a must, so the idea of mastery of music and words isn’t as staggering today as it was in the golden age of American song when the Porters and Gershwins and such were doing their thing. Porter, knowing language and music, and singing, which is important if you want people to be able to successfully put your music across, and these folks were always writing for other people, phrases things in a most amazing way:

I get no kick [beat] from champagne

That is, in fact, 8 beats. I love that implied pause.

Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all

Note the internal rhyme, alcohol with all.

So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you

Then on to the lovely

Some get their kicks from cocaine

which is bowdlerized by Sinatra into

Some like the perfume from Spain

which just isn’t the same. Ask any smelly crackhead. But the next section is the top:

I know that if / I took even one sniff
It would bore me terriff / ic’ly too

This is the sort of phrasing that I think absolutely requires the lyrics and music to come from the same brain. And it’s fun for a performer to sing. Then, of course, speaking of merging performance with the words and the music there’s the rising notes to accompany the flying words of

I get no kick on a plane
Riding too high with some guy in the sky [three internals, four if you count the I in riding]
Is my idea of nothing to do
But I get a kick out of you.

I have nothing against Sinatra, witnessed by my ownership of, I guess, almost every album he ever recorded. But he’s no friend of the composers: he makes all songs into Sinatra songs, which is his great strength as a singer. If you want the music distilled, the way the writers wrote it, there are other singers you should visit. Fred Astaire is one of the best for direct interpretations of songs as written. Ella. Feinstein. These are orthodoxies. But my absolutely favorite singer, other than Sinatra? No contest. Louis Armstrong. If Sinatra is pop’s God, Louis is God’s pop.