I'm thinking of closing this site due to lack of interest. The domain is $12 a year and the server is $6 a month. I have two other sites on it but I don't really need those anymore. If it weren't for this forum, I could probably just get rid of the whole server. I just checked out discord and I see there's a big group there at least for now. Maybe you guys can go there instead. Since even with the mass exodus from Facebook, nobody has any interest in the forum save for you three, it's hard to justify the cost and effort. Incidentally, if you want to join the discord Jennifer set up, you need to replace the last dot in Tom's link with a forward slash. So gg/Ew....

Circling back around, coincidentally...

Bang! The war commences.
The enemy awaits in quivering expectancy...
The poor defenses, the penetrable gates—
How terrible to be a woman!

The time is here.
The game is there.
The smell of fear
Like musk pervades the air...


It's not coincidental that this target happens to rhyme with "my hair"... Just sayin'.
Re-recapping, and then some:

• One of the remaining two "my hair"s is sung by a female character who, while younger than ITW's Rapunzel*, shares with her a somewhat similar dramatic arc (minus the tragic spiral to an early death); their hair bears a certain resemblance, too.
• The other is sung by a woman in a duet that many consider one of the highlights of a relatively seldom-produced show.  Out of all seven, this singer is the only one who's mentioning her hair as a point of seemingly uncomplicated sexual pride, with no apparent worries about age, upkeep, etc.  (Of course, this being Sondheim, things turn out not to be so simple).
• Each is from a different show, and neither is from Night Music, Into The Woods, Passion, SITPWG, or Sweeney.
• One of them rhymes "the air" with "my hair".
• And the other one, just as a heads-up, occurs at almost the very top of the song in which it appears, sharply limiting the available target words that could lead to it.

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*Granted, Rapunzel's own age has been a matter of some confusion.  She seems like a sheltered late-teen or young adult.  But her brother the Baker has for many years been unaware of her existence, presumably having been too young to remember their mother's pregnancy — which would put the siblings' age gap in the lower single digits.  He and his Wife, meanwhile, are written (and usually cast) to seem no younger than, say, 30 — in which case, given the above, the Witch must be keeping Rapunzel in captivity well into adulthood.  But for present purposes, even if we assume the Baker is only in his mid-20s, his sister would still be older than the young lady we're looking for.

Freezing would be a nice temperature to reach. It is 10°F here. I believe this is the warmest it has been all weekend, but I don't feel like doing the research necessary to confirm this. I just know it's been frigid since Saturday, but I do have a furnace and an insulated house (and a dog).  

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day.  The National Civil Rights Museum is hosting an in-person and virtual event "Community Over Chaos: King Day 2025" which seems doubly significant today.  

In weather news.....it is FREEZING here in Texas.  Insulation is something only the homes of the "privileged" were built with so the rest of us need to drip the water taps overnight and into the late morning until the temps rise above freezing.  In about two days the temperatures will soar back into the 50s.  The weather here is chaos.  

As an alternate to the Facebook group, Jennifer started a Discord server.  It is set up similarly to the board with the primary difference is it is more mobile technology friendly.  If you'd like to join here is a link:  https://discord.gg.EwGYnY9T   It will be active for 7 days.  I am not going to hyperlink it to try and foil the bots.  

This is the last "my hair" that I have found, and I too thought it was sung by Clara.

Perhaps when next we meet,
I'll be a sorry sight.
You won't know who I am.
My hair completely white,
My face
A mass of wrinkles.
What will you feel then,
My Giorgio?
Time is now our enemy...


Five down, two to go, and there's probably some convoluted way that "enemy" connects back to "my hair"

Given how far beyond the precincts of cast albums, revivals and film versions SJS's work has spread in this century, it seems like there should be an umbrella thread for the various other lives his music has found outside the shows for which they were written.

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Dunno how I missed this pure sugar rush, released just as the pandemic was shutting down theaters, but here it is, better half a decade late than never:

Losing My Mind: A Sondheim Disco Fever Dream

(available on all music streaming platforms)

It really is candy (maybe laced with something?) and, as such, a little goes a long way; the album's retro LP-length 43 minutes handily manages not to outstay its welcome.  But it gleefully puts to rest the old saw about SJS's music being inaccessible or "unmelodic", and the producers' and artists' bonkers enthusiasm is infectious.

Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Dec 28, 2024, 12:06 PM...seven different women — and they are all women, ranging from very-young to approaching-middle-age — singing seven different songs in which they mention their own hair. 

Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Jan 19, 2025, 02:21 AMSo, to recap:

• The three remaining instances (that I'm aware of) all come from different shows:  different from each other, and from the ones that have already been played.
• None is a cut song like "Bang!" or a later addition like "Our Little World" — these three songs have all been in their respective shows since their original productions (and cast albums), and remain in them to this day, so they're not too obscure.
• And, while one is from a less widely-known show, to those who have seen or heard it (it's had at least three cast albums), the song in which it appears tends to pop out as an instant highlight.
• None are hidden in chorus or counterpoint; the remaining three instances are all technically duets, but all three "my hair"s occur in clear, easy-to-hear solo lines.
• The three remaining instances are sung by women ranging in age from "very young" (probably even younger than Rapunzel, and, one could say, following a similar path) to "eyeing middle age from a cautious distance" (like a less-jaded Charlotte, perhaps).

MY BAD!  Turns out, that last-mentioned instance is actually sung by a man!

In my defense: he's actually singing from the first-person perspective of the woman with whom this duet is shared (or, more accurately, split).  It passes from her to him midway through — in fact, the topic of her hair becomes the more-or-less arbitrary "handoff point" at which the song segues from her vocal line to his, after a brief unison passage — but, dramaturgically speaking, the words remain manifestly hers all the way through, even when he's singing them alone.  By the time the specific phrase "my hair" occurs, he has taken over the vocals entirely, while she has likely exited the stage a stanza or two ago; but he's continuing to sing her thoughts (about her own hair, among other things) verbatim, as it were.

In light of all that, misidentifying the singer of that particular phrase in that particular context was an honest, if careless, mistake.  Still: if my erroneous claim that all seven instances were sung by women caused anyone to overlook this one — my apologies!

Quote from: Leighton on Jan 19, 2025, 11:50 AMI thought Sweeney might have one but can't think of it - same for Sunday (thought more YOUR hair than MY hair).

Yeah, I thought of those too; while I admittedly haven't done an exhaustive search for any other instances beyond these seven, Johanna and Dot did occur to me as possibilities — but I couldn't think of any moment where either of them actually sings about her own hair.  It's always their respective admirers who are the ones rhapsodizing about it.

Even Dot's self-critique in "Color and Light" covers seemingly every other physical attribute, but not that one.  (Then again, when you've cast Bernadette Peters, you probably don't write a lyric that asks an audience to believe her character is insecure about, of all things, her hair).

I thought Sweeney might have one but can't think of it - same for Sunday (thought more YOUR hair than MY hair).

Brushing my hair,
Combing my hair.
Only my mother
And me and my hair.
Our little world
Is perfect...
If she just didn't drool.


Four down (Desirée, Florinda, Charlotte, Rapunzel), three to go...

It's worth noting that the four instances played so far just happen to cover the two "double"-my hair shows, in which an unrelated pair of occurrences happens in the same show:  A Little Night Music and Into The Woods.

And "Our Little World", the "seemingly most-obvious" instance (given who's singing), also covers the other "not immediately obvious" lyric (since the song was added later and made "optional", and may therefore be less widely familiar).

So, to recap:

• The three remaining instances (that I'm aware of) all come from different shows:  different from each other, and from the ones that have already been played.
• None is a cut song like "Bang!" or a later addition like "Our Little World" — these three songs have all been in their respective shows since their original productions (and cast albums), and remain in them to this day, so they're not too obscure.
• And, while one is from a less widely-known show, to those who have seen or heard it (it's had at least three cast albums), the song in which it appears tends to pop out as an instant highlight.
• None are hidden in chorus or counterpoint; the remaining three instances are all technically duets, but all three "my hair"s occur in clear, easy-to-hear solo lines.
• The three remaining instances are sung by women ranging in age from "very young" (probably even younger than Rapunzel, and, one could say, following a similar path) to "eyeing middle age from a cautious distance" (like a less-jaded Charlotte, perhaps).  [CORRECTION: This latter instance, while relaying the woman's words verbatim, is actually sung by a man -- my bad!!