2. “The Beautiful Game”

The titular song of the show is its first sung number. Its aim is to establish further the importance of football in the lives of our protagonists. This is achieved in the first stanza:

Measure your life in football seasons
Feel the passion and feel the heat
Football is the only reason
God Almighty gave us feet

It is interesting to listen to the segue that Lloyd Webber has used to get from the “Overture” into the song. It recalls stylistically the score of Starlight Express, a sense which pervades the whole song more strongly at some times than others. There must be something about expressing the theme of competition through the medium of rock music that triggers this sensibility in Lloyd Webber’s compositional vocabulary.

The song is conceptual rather than situational: although it sounds as though a match is being watched, this isn’t really the case and the song doesn’t offer enough specifics to support that kind of reading. The song’s objective is to introduce the community of Northern Irish Catholics from which the main characters of the play will be drawn. In this song, all are united with not a single voice of dissent. This establishes the dramatic point of departure of the play, a united celebration of football and Ireland that will be irrevocably ruptured by the end of the next song.

Elton’s lyrics – his first for a complete musical theatre score – are something of a curate’s egg. There are delightful moments in this song, such as rhymes that really on work because of the dialect of the characters – an echo back to the nuanced work that Oscar Hammerstein II did in his book and lyrics for Oklahoma! and Carousel:

You dirty bastard
We’ll have the last word.

There are moments of innuendo – part of the crassness in the lyrics that many critics lamented – that work really well and help to flesh out the situation, as when the girls offer the following ambivalent statement and command:

They’re our lads and we support them:
Come on then, stick one in this time

Only to be let down later:

No joy tonight, forget it again:
My boyfriend’s in love with eleven men.

The lyric may not reflect a wit that recalls Noël Coward, but it does work for the characters and their situation. Where Elton flounders is in moments where he cannot marry the lyric with either the characters or the music or both or when he does not have the discipline to go for a proper rhyme, as in this sorry instance:

Come and have a go, have some of that
You think you’re hard but we know you’re crap.

Lyrics such as these really need to be rewritten and refined. Another point on which to ponder: this song is similar in its dramatic objective to “The Jet Song” from West Side Story. With an overture that similarly mimics the objective of that 1957 show’s opening, one wonders if there is more in common to these shows than a tragic clash between two opposing socio-political groups or if, at the very least, Elton and Lloyd Webber are drawing inspiration from that classic Broadway show’s integrated structure.

Purchases from Amazon.com

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
1. The Beautiful Game Original London Cast CD.
2. The Beautiful Game Vocal Selections.