"New York, New York"
my stories about the song
The Threepenny Review hosts symposiums on varied topics; the latest is “On New York.” I chose to write about two occasions in the 1990s when I performed “New York, New York” by Kander and Ebb. Read it here.
Along the way I am a little dismissive of the song, which was originally written for the Martin Scorsese movie New York, New York. Imagine my surprise when I opened the paper to learn the last person to contribute to the symposium was: Martin Scorsese. (Read his contribution here.)
Congratulations to my editor Wendy Lesser for sneakily planting that minor detonation for me to discover! The urge to let me know in advance must have been strong, but she held her fire. Good one!
The other contributors to the symposium are Vivian Gornick, Paul Krugman, Ge Gao, Jackson Arn, Arthur Lubow, and Janny Scott; all the pieces are linked from this Threepenny page.
Your anecdote is one of the all-time great ones. Thank you, Ethan.
The Yankees' decision to adopt "NY, NY" as their walk-off music after home wins clearly ratcheted the song up to a kind of unfortunate universality, and millions of people think they know it because they have sung along with it after a beer or three.