It is a small world after all is said and done.

Yeah. That never would have made a good lyric, but contract a few words, discard the ending, and you've got the title of one of the most maligned verse/chorus songs of all time.

I was on that ride on Wednesday. Much to the immediate displeasure of Calvin, who whined and complained all through the line and then closed his eyes and covered his ears as we made that joyously air-conditioned boat ride through pure gleeish schmaltz.

Disneyland is no place for children.

At least my children.

I've had an easier time getting him to eat broccoli then I did making have fun at Disneyland.

Next vacation will be an asparagus festival.

But as we rounded the second or third bend, I stopped being frustrated and turned my thought towards the music. At first I found it fascinating that each section was almost seamlessly integrated between the sections. It occurred to me that each section had a different recording of the same song, in the same key, at the same tempo and yet they were all vastly different stylistically and as you passed from village to mountainside, each recording flowed into the next.

How much equipment was needed in the sixties to make that possible? Remember this was an era where the Beatle could record an entire album with just four tracks.

And then I started to listen to the craft of the song. How perfectly clever they were. Not a lyrical line missed or extended. The melody flowed perfectly. How the second part of the verse makes a perfect little dance around the circle of fifths. How the key was selected at exactly the right place for the limited range of a children's choir.

(My biggest pet peeve of children's theatre is how badly keyed it is for children's voices. Twelve year olds should not be doing Sondheim, I don't care how fucking cute "Into the Woods" is.)

I was mesmerized. Fascinated by the craft. I did a quick little google search to see who had written the song and I came across something surprising.

"Its a Small World." was written by the Sherman Brothers. One of the most prolific songwriting teams in movie and television history. Their father Al Sherman was a writer in the Tin Pan Alley days and encouraged them to write.

I won't bore you with their biography. Besides, I was looking at wikipedia and some of it has to be wrong, but it was extensive. And it really got me to thinking about how the day of the pure song writer is over. How the craft slips ever further from substance into style.

Sure we can't replicate those perfect rhymes any longer. They've become cliches. But Rockstars did something to the craft that is irrevocable. They discovered that money is in copyright. And if they didn't write their own songs, they were loosing out.

Teenage angst pays off well.

So sang Kurt Cobain.

Good line. Lame lyric.

And I've said it before. I'd much rather be a master of the craft than a Rockstar.

"Here Lady Gaga, record this, trust me, they'll love it"

I had a conversation once with another songwriter who was talking about vetting offers from a recording company.

"I couldn't take anything less than a million dollars. Anything else wouldn't be enough to risk my job."

To which her boyfriend leaned over and said,

"You're talking to Josh. He would sell a song for a turkey sandwich."

And he's right.

Let me illustrate:

Recently an old boyfriend of my wife's has made it into the tabloids. I won't bother you with his name but lets just say he's a fifty one year old actor who has had a few big successes, and pops up here and there.

Well this fifty one year old actor has just gotten married to a sixteen year old girl.

A sixteen year old girl with a website showcasing her talents as a singer. A pop singer with breast implants and enough auto-tune to correct scoliosis.

And my first thought wasn't "How Obscene!"

My first though was "Yeah, she's gonna need a real songwriter, and I wonder if my wife still has his email somewhere."

Cause I'm a pig. And a bit of a whore.

And I could really use a turkey sandwich right now.

And it turns out that this fifty one year old ex-boyfriend of my wife, has his own production company.

I'm starting to feel a little momentum.

I know a girl, who knows a guy, who married a girl, who will never be a pop star, but obviously has some money, and could open the kind of doors that lead to real pop stars. The kind of pop stars that have no problem paying for a song with a turkey sandwich.

Notice how I didn't wake my wife up at this point to show her the news.

I wanted to get a little deeper into the story.

On further review of the You Tube videos I recognized a canned drum beat from GarageBand.

Wait, I said. This wasn't a money production. This was someone trying to break out of the porn industry with a three year old MacBook Pro, and a 16 year old girl.

And then I raced to the website of the production company.

Maybe there's some money there.

It's mission statement: "To let artists dream . . . "

Ouch.

And it got worse.

Current projects included (I shit you not) a series of children's books based on the adventures of his chihuahua.

So there's no real opportunity. Even when the songwriter knows a girl, who knows a guy, who has probably reached the tail end of his fame with a slapdash marriage to a sixteen year old girl at a Vegas hot spot.

I wish them love and luck all the same.

And as I clicked out of all the different websites and was about to clean my browser, I saw a little picture of Ringo Starr and the bottom of one of the articles.

A connection to Ringo Starr singing one of his first hits after the break up of the Beatles.

"You're 16."

If you're unfamiliar with the tune, do as I did, look it up on you Tube. It contains the lyric "You're Sixteen, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine."

And there's three points I'd like to make about the song "You're 16."

First, it was a hit by several singers going back to the sixties. Which kind of solidifies the fascination that famous grown men have for girls at that age. (I find them mostly vapid, but I'm not famous)

Second, Ringo Starr's recording of the song is actually the only hit song in recorded history to feature a Kazoo solo.

And Lastly,

you guessed it,

It was written by the Sherman Brothers.