“Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Rock, pop, and finding your partner

PAGES

2017.11.02Akira Murayama

Rock/pop masterpieces that shaped the world of “Hedwig”

As mentioned above, ``Hedwig and the Angry Inch'' took four years to complete as a musical. When John Cameron Mitchell first appeared as "Hedwig" at the club "Squeezebox" in 1994, there were almost no original songs, and Mitchell sang parody versions of famous rock songs to "Hedwig". .

According to the English version of Wikipedia, the songs being sung at that time were Fleetwood Mac's " Oh Well ," Television's " See No Evil ," Reckless Eric's " Whole Wide World ," and Yoko Ono's " Death of Samantha ', Per Ubu's ' Non-Alignment Pact ', Cher's ' Half Breed ', David Bowie's ' Boys Keep Swinging ', Mott the Hoople's ' All the Young Dudes ', Velvet Underground's ' Femme'. ``Fatale '' and ``You Light Up My Life'' , which Pat Boone's daughter Debbie Boone covered as the theme song for the movie ``My Song'' (1977), which became a big hit. .

I'd love to see how these songs were arranged and sung in the style of "Hedwig," but I'd like to focus on Reckless Eric's "Whole Wide World."

Reckless Eric is a singer-songwriter who emerged from the British pub rock scene in the late 1970s, and his signature song, ``Whole Wide World,'' is arguably the only one that is well known to the general public. It's a masterpiece that shines in its simplicity, with just two chords, E and A, and a song about going to find a girl who's waiting for you somewhere in the world. Coupled with Reckless Eric's unique voice, which has a somewhat pitiful yet arrogant tone, it has a charm that makes you smile.

This song was also impressively used in Marc Forster's ` `I Was the Hero '' (2006). In an effort to break out of his shell, Will Ferrell plays a straight-laced accounting auditor who acquires an electric guitar, which he has always wanted to buy, and chooses ``Whole Wide World'' as his first practice song. Then, he sings while playing the guitar that was in the house of Anna, the woman he loves, and they bond with Anna.

The lyrics of "Whole Wide World", in which the mother tells you when you're a child, "There's only one girl in this world waiting for you," are in perfect sync with the theme of "Origin of Love." are doing. There is no doubt that Hedwig's story was shaped by the blue romanticism of the song, ``I'll go anywhere in the world to find her.'' If you rewatch ``Hedwig and the Angry Inch'' while keeping in mind ``Whole Wide World'' and the cover song that was sung on the first stage, you will feel a new expansion that you didn't notice before, so I would like to thank the fans. I would definitely recommend it.

Text: Akira Murayama

Born in 1971. Writes articles for magazines, newspapers, movie sites, etc. Representative of “ShortCuts,” a review site for distribution-based works.

Watch now

View work information