John McWhorter: belief

Transcript context

…Andrew Lloyd Webber? Oh God! [laughter] Oh, it’s a tragedy. And I know that there are fans out there. There are people who think of Evita as their Porgy and Bess, and I do understand that. There are people who really, really like Jesus Christ Superstar. I understand that. But, no, he’s a — no one will ever ask me about this in public again — he is a very thin talent who got very lucky. He has a terrible sense of lyricism. He does his job. He’s not offensive, but he doesn’t have anything that I would call genius. Richard Rodgers could sit down and write a tune drunk, having yelled at somebody sometime in the ’50s, and had more of a melodic gift than Lloyd Webber has ever come up with more than about seven times. And when he comes up with a good melody, he often doesn’t have the decency to write a bridge to the song. A very thin talent. Whenever I think of him, I think he made an awful lot of money, and he’s still making it, based on a thin talent. Some people get lucky. Now tell us what you really think. [laughter] Harold Arlen.…

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