The Big Picture and the Closeup

A jukebox musical, whatever its dramatic blueprint, is first and foremost a delivery vehicle for nostalgia. This is a popular thing and to a great extent a good one. It is no easy trick, though. Almost every song tells some sort of story. The stories in most songs, even the simplest ones, imply surprisingly extensive contexts, and taken together, these contexts tangle rapidly. There exist only a few possible fundamental ways to minimize those tangles.

Kate, I guess, continued to date that other guy, Jim, until the school year ended. That summer, she was somewhere else. I knew she was out of town, and yet somehow, I kept finding reasons to visit her home. Not knocking, not asking if anyone else was there. Just walking by. That fall, the fall of 1966, the Four Seasons came out with a song that expressed exactly how I felt, their cover of Cole Porter’s immortal I’ve Got You Under My Skin.