Send in the Clowns
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"Send in the Clowns" is a song by Stephen Sondheim, from the 1973 musical A Little Night Music. It is a slow, mournful ballad, in which the character Desiree reflects on the ironies and disappointments in her life.
Of Stephen Sondheim's more than 800 songs, this is the one that became a megahit. It achieved popularity with recordings by Frank Sinatra and, later, Judy Collins (whose version charted twice on the U.S. pop singles chart in the mid-1970s, reaching a high of #19). Sondheim added a verse for a 1985 Barbra Streisand recording.
The song was written for actress Glynis Johns, who had a breathy voice and a limited tessitura—Sondheim wrote the song with short phrases and a small music range (only about an octave). The song is considered a jazz standard, performed famously by Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, and the Stan Kenton Orchestra among others.
The title refers to a phrase reputedly used in a circus when an unforeseen disaster had occurred, with the clowns being sent in to distract the audience from the problem. Alternatively, the title could refer to the practice in vaudeville theatre of sending the clowns on to the stage to distract the audience after a particularly bad act.
References in popular culture
- The song was once parodied in The Simpsons episode Krusty Gets Kancelled, when Krusty the Klown holds a going away special to prepare for the end of his washed-out career ( which, predictably, isn't over)
- The song was also parodied on Dexter's Laboratory. In the episode "Double Trouble", Dexter exclaims "Where are clones??? Send in the clones!!!" when confronted with thousands of clones of his sister Dee Dee.
- Switters, the main character in Tom Robbins' novel Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, is a closet Broadway musical fan whose secret anthem is "Send in the Clowns".
External links
In other episode (Treehouse of Horror XIII (#DABF19 / SI-1319) first aired 3 Nov 2002, "Send in the Clones" - in a takeoff on the movie Multiplicity, Homer's hammock starts making clones of Homer...one of which kills Flanders.
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