You're the Top


"You're the Top" is a list song by Cole Porter, from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. It is about a man and a woman who take turns complimenting each other. The best-selling version was Paul Whiteman's Victor single, which made the top five. It was the most popular song from Anything Goes at the time, with hundreds of parodies. Some of the lyrics were re-written by P. G. Wodehouse for the British version of Anything Goes. Composer Robert Kapilow refers to "You're the Top" as one of Porter's greatest songs.

Composition

Porter is believed to have written the song in Paris, while eating dinner at the Le Bœuf sur le toit with Lela Emery, the wife of Alastair Mackintosh. The two of them spent the time amusing themselves with a word game, "making up a list of superlatives that rhymed."

People and items referenced in the song

The following is a list of the references used in the version recorded by Cole Porter on November 26, 1934:
The 1934 recording with Cole Porter's vocals and piano is available on a CD --
Cole Porter: A Centennial Collection, Sony Legacy, CD release 2007
Additional references in other versions of the song:
P. G. Wodehouse anglicised it for the British version of Anything Goes. Among other changes, he altered two lines from "You’re an O’Neill drama / You’re Whistler’s mama!" to "You’re Mussolini / You’re Mrs Sweeny"

Versions of the song

Parodies

Porter biographer William McBrien wrote that at the height of its popularity in 1934 to 1935 it had become a "popular pastime" to create parodies of the lyrics. Porter, who himself had called the song "just a trick" the public would get bored by, was flooded with hundreds of parodies, one reportedly written by Irving Berlin. Despite the ribald nature of some of the parodies, McBrien believes a few, including a King Kong parody, were written by Porter or Berlin.