The only recording available of this song is a low-quality demo sung by the composer and lyricist that was included as a bonus track on a rerelease of the cast album, and frankly even that is probably too good for it. In fact, this may well be the worst song ever cut from a top-level Broadway classic. The premise of this song is, in fact, almost exactly the same as that of the legendarily awful Rob Reiner children’s film North (granted, this song came up with the idea twenty years before North did, but trust me, this routine was just as offensive in the Seventies as it would be in the Nineties). It basically consists of a bunch of extremely offensive ethnic caricatures trying to pretend to be Annie’s parents (so they can collect the reward money Warbucks is offering), and fighting with each other about which of them is supposedly telling the truth. Granted, even the songs in the finished score of Annie, while good, generally left something to be desired in the lyrics department, but there’s really no excuse for this monstrosity. Even songwriters Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin seem to be genuinely ashamed that they ever even considered putting this in the show…in the accompanying liner notes, Charnin seems extremely embarrassed that this song ever saw the light of day. Of course, there was no chance of this ever actually ending up in the finished version of a show as capably produced as Annie, but just the fact that they bothered to finish writing it, let alone recorded a demo of it and sang it at backer’s auditions, is more than horrifying enough in and of itself.
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