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Three “Out of This World” Tunes
A challenging Plethora of Pop Rate-a-Record challenge
Three very different interpretations of a 1945 song (one of which has eclipsed the original as a timeless classic and the other of which is yet to be discovered). I’m uploading these versions not to pit one against another, but to show how much variety can be mined from a single melody. Rate how these work for you, with a score from 35–98, as per the initial version of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand as envisioned by Terry Barr.
“Out of This World” (original recording), Jo Stafford
Technically, the first version of this song was written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer (dang, what a duo!) for the 1945 film of the same title about an all-female band, lip-synched by Eddie Bracken and sung by Bing Crosby), but Jo Stafford and her collaborator (later husband) mood music maestro Paul Weston released the song as a flip side a month before the film appeared. Weston’s arrangement contains a number of Weston-ish theatrical flourishes, but the orchestration and Stafford’s gossamer vocals create an extra-terrestial mood.
