There Are Worse Things I Could Do
"There Are Worse Things I Could Do" is a song written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey as the 11 o'clock number for the musical Grease.
Synopsis[edit]
In the musical, it is sung by Rizzo, the alpha female leader of the Pink Ladies; the song takes place at the climax of the story.[1] While at a party with her fellow Pink Ladies, she confides that she has missed her period and fears she may be pregnant; she initially claims the likely father of the unborn child is a stranger, but Sandy soon deduces that Rizzo's on-again-off-again boyfriend Kenickie is the only person who could have possibly impregnated her. (In the stage version, this leaves a plot hole, as Rizzo is seen inviting class valedictorian and established nerd Eugene Florczyk to have sex shortly before the pregnancy scare; this is removed in the 1978 film version, which implies a tryst with Kenickie earlier in the film is the undeniable cause of the possible pregnancy.) Rumors spread quickly around Rydell High, and Rizzo becomes the subject of contempt and ridicule. She sings that beneath her bad, street girl image, she is really a vulnerable, insecure girl who genuinely does care what people think about her, but that showing her weakness is the worst thing she could do. In the musical, the song is directed toward Sandy, while in the film, it is aimed more toward the out-of-earshot head cheerleader Patty Simcox, who had sneered at Rizzo just before the song.
Written in thirty-two-bar form, the bridge is set to a portion of Pino Donaggio's 1965 composition "Io che non vivo." (This is a slight anachronism, since the musical is set ambiguously in the late 1950s, although Joseph Kosma's 1945 song "Autumn Leaves," which features a similar progression, had been popularized by Roger Williams in 1955, a few years before Grease is set.) The melody of Io che non vivo had been made famous by Dusty Springfield, who had a hit with the English-language "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" set to the same tune.
In the stage version, this incident is what finally convinces Sandy to abandon her "good girl" approach to life and embrace the greaser persona. In the denouement, Rizzo discovers she is not pregnant after all.
References[edit]
- ↑ "Vanessa Hudgens' Heartbreaking Solo Leads 10 Most Re-Watched 'Grease: Live' Moments". TheWrap. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
 | This musical theatre related article is a stub. You can help EverybodyWiki by expanding it. |
This article "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
