To purchase the soundtrack of THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS, click on the image above.

7. “A Lil’ Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place” from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

I have to admit it. I am a whore for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. I just love it. It’s a wonderful camp cowboys and prostitutes wonderland and this number expresses its sheer joy best for me. I know it is frowned upon to enjoy the film, but I love that too. When Dolly, her ladies and the men who frequent the Chicken Ranch celebrate the life they know so well in this song, there’s just nothing like it for sequins, tawdry sexiness and camp satisfaction. The song that almost made it onto this list instead is “Hard Candy Christmas”, which is on the other send of the scale and is a moment of true pathos for these rambunctious hookers. I might have to listen to the soundtrack now, but there’s a bell ringing and I have to get there double-quick.

6. “Someone in a Tree” from Pacific Overtures

When I was at university and extending my Sondheim knowledge beyond West Side Story, Gypsy, Company, Into the Woods, Dick Tracy and Putting it Together, I discovered a video tape with a little documentary on the writing of “Someone in a Tree”. I had the same jaw-dropping experience watching that documentary as I did when I watched Sweeney Todd for the first time. This is a profound song, with an explicit thesis communicated through culture, situation and character. It’s mind-bogglingly brilliant how all of those elements come together in this piece of songwriting.

5. “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Company

Company has a great score. There are so many songs I could have chosen for this list: the title song, “Being Alive”, “Another Hundred People” or “Side by Side by Side”. But I chose “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” because although all of the others move me deeply or feature brilliant concepts and constructions, this one is my favourite. It’s withstood a number of interpretations: the solo male version in Putting It Together, Dorothy Loudon’s brilliant mash-up of the song with “Losing My Mind from Follies and even the snarky back-and-forth duet version that appeared in the deeply unsatisfying Sondheim on Sondheim revue. But the song is always best when it’s sung as originally intended, by a group of fabulous ladies lamenting the shortcomings of the one and only Bobby.