In “Flight 1”, Don totally negs this Japanese lady in the restaurant after he has to break it off with Mohawk Airlines (this is the episode where Pete’s dad dies in the AA crash). She’s into him, and usually when Don suffers a work setback, he likes to make it up in personal lady time, but he says “Not tonight” and bravely soldiers on.
Anyways, this song “Sukiyaki” is what’s delightfully playing over this exchange. The original title of the song translates to “I look up when I walk”, which the singer does so his tears won’t fall.
Making the whole thing just that more Weiner-loves-his-details-esque? Sakamato died in a plane crash.
Get cultural! Way back in season one, the episode “Marriage of Figaro” is named after the Mozart opera, natch. The comedic opera, subtitled “Day of Madness”, isn’t hugely supportive of marriage, aptly enough for our burgeoning Pete and Don characters.
This aria, played during Sally’s birthday party (you know, the one where Don peaces out on his fam and comes back with a dog?), is called “Voi Che Sapete”, and it plays during the second act of Mozart’s opera, sung by a young pageboy falling in love.
The lyrics, translated, go:
You who know what love is, Ladies, see if I have it in my heart. I’ll tell you what I’m feeling, It’s new for me, and I understand nothing. I have a feeling, full of desire, Which is by turns delightful and miserable.
I freeze and then feel my soul go up in flames, Then in a moment I turn to ice. I’m searching for affection outside of myself, I don’t know how to hold it, nor even what it is! I sigh and lament without wanting to, I twitter and tremble without knowing why, I find peace neither night nor day, But still I rather enjoy languishing this way. You who know what love is, Ladies, see if I have it in my heart.
P.S. Matthew Weiner loves this aria! He also used it in an episode of The Sopranos.
Hmm! This song. It’s so undeniably personal. Can it really be applied to Don Draper when it speaks to so many things and so many people? Bob Dylan’s mournful little break up song was released in 1963, and it was featured in the finale of season one “The Wheel”, which ends in 1960.
I don’t think it was a good choice! The sound works, for sure, but the lyrics just don’t match up. Dylan’s song is sad, certainly, but it’s not regretful. He’s a traveling gypsy, just like Don wishes he could be sometimes, but he certainly doesn’t wish it in the season one finale. He comes home to reunite with his family, not to walk down that “long, lonesome road.”
For a show that usually matches mood with song so well, and tries so hard to be chronistic, this song choice is jarring.
Remember when Paul and Pete were going to go to that NASA conference in 2.10 The Inheritance? And then Don totally crushes Paul’s spirit and life by deciding to go in his place? Well, as the camera cuts from Paul’s dejected form to Don and Pete taking off for their futuristic endeavor, this appropriately sci-fi kind of song plays. Complaints were heard on message boards around the internets about the song sounding anachronistic, but this song was released right in 1962, so it’s perfect!
We’ll get to the actual anachronistic songs (source of much debate) later.
Recall if you will Joan’s impromptu performance of C’est Magnifique, from the Cole Porter musical Can-Can, back in episode “My Old Kentucky Home”. Here’s her singing it for you.
Here’s Dean Martin singing it, if that’s your thing too.
Mad Men Playlist: the haunting theme music from season three, episode five, “The Fog”. This is played during Betty’s surreal dream sequences — to complement the surrealism, this track is a Spanish one! From the Sex and Lucia soundtrack, composed by Alberto Iglesias, it is called Me Voy a Morir de Tanto Amor (I am going to die of too much love). Enjoy these late night jams.
Hey beautiful people! It’s your friendly neighborhood Other Natasha speaking. We’re starting a little fun supplement to our regular posts, called Mad Men Playlist. It’ll be just some of the great music we’ve heard over the past few years. This particular groovy thing comes from season one, episode “Nixon v Kennedy”. Isn’t it beautiful? Joan’s listening to it during the election party.
The recording you heard at the end of last night’s EPIC/THRILLING/CLUTCH YOUR PEARLS IN DRAMATIC ECSTASY is from the 1969 musical “Oliver ” (directed by Footnotes favorite old timey auteur Carol Reed!). It’s the orphan Oliver’s solo about his missing mumsie.
Also, Oliver had it’s big broadway run in —of course — 1963 (remember Joanie gave the Britts tickets to see it earlier in the season? I bet you do!)
Uh, look, keeping with the Whitman style of opening The Box: I knew this song instantly because I was in Oliver in elementary school. I have a deplorable singing voice but could do the most marvelous cockney accent in the 5th grade so I was cast as Nancy, the battered hooker lead. I had a duet with Dodger, who was played by America Ferrera — you may know her as Ugly Betty.
8 years later she and I would get into a drama-class related shoving match (“what fisticuffs?!”) and I would be suspended. Then she would win a couple of golden globes and Emmys and so on. But is she on Tumblr? Does any one reblog her historical footnoting? HMMMMM? So clearly, victory (and tomorrow) belongs to me.
This was the song playing is the apartment above the garage that Don likes to frequent.
The Singing Nun, a Belgium lady of the faith, became an international song star with her 1963 single: Dominique. Then they made a movie about her. Then she left monastery to embark on a singing career.
Then her producers got most of her money.
She wrote a song in the late sixties supporting the Pill, “Glory be to God for the Golden Pill.”
The Singing Nun opened a school for austistic children in the 70’s.
She was flat broke in the 80’s and comitted suicide.
The new structure was 17 stories with “perpendicular railways”; an indoor driveway on the 34th street side, the first in hotel history; a grand ballroom seating 1,500 and a roof garden. Between them the two hotels had 1,000 rooms, three floors of banquet and meeting rooms and common manage- man under George Boldt. After it was named Waldorf=Astoria, New Yorkers would tell their friends, “Meet me at the Hyphen.” ‘Where’s that?’ the friends would ask. ‘Between the Waldorf and the Astoria.’
