I **completely **disagree, especially with “Into the Woods.” In fact I really can’t even comprehend how you could say that. 
The title song is so damn catchy it stays stuck in my head for days after hearing it.
Just about, except for the title song.
Not my experience at all! I have sung in any number of musicals and operettas along with church choir music–I know my way around a musical score, though I’m very far from being a professional musician. Couldn’t hum more than an occasional phrase from any of the show. I found it not “sticky” at all. Obviously YMVs!
I think his music is well beyond “pleasant and serviceable” and I think much of it is the good kind of catchy, but I can kind of see astorian’s point though I’d attribute the less memorable qualities of Sondheim’s song to something else:
The songs from his shows, with a few notable exceptions, are filled with narrative that makes them not really work out of context from the story. “Giants in the Sky” is one of my favorite songs from Into the Woods but you’re not going to hear it on a singer’s solo album or at a cabaret performance (unless it’s theater geek performing for theater geeks all stroking one another). Same could be said about “Greens Greens”. Even “You Are Not Alone” has lyrics like “Witches can be right, Giants can be good” which would just be weird sung at a concert for an audience that is not familiar with the show. Michael Bublé is not going to record “Priest” from Sweeney Todd on his next album, the cast of Glee are never going to sing “Unworthy of You Love” from Assassins, “Getting Married Today” from Company will never be performed on American Idol.
These are all wonderful songs and they’re all catchy, but they can’t really be removed from the show for which they were written.
Cue the Sondheim fan who will now enter the Thread to list all of the songs that work when removed from their respective shows.
Got back this afternoon.
The cast was not exactly a bunch of slackers, but Meryl Streep was that much better than everyone else in the cast. Its POSSIBLE that Johnny Depp was holding his own, and Chris Pine had his moments (surprise), but I’m not sure I’d ever want to share a screen with Meryl Streep, even if I had an Oscar or Golden Globe nomination in my pocket already.
My fifteen year old daughter, who is not terribly familiar with the body of Meryl Streep’s work, was astounded.
Send in The Clowns.
And, um…Send in the Clowns.
I think you’re right, and also, Sondheim isn’t easy to sing. Or to hum. He likes all those weird intervals that are wonderful in the hands of a competent singer, but when you sing them in the shower, you realize you’re not entirely sure where to go next.
I imagine there’s pretty much a giant collective sigh of relief among the distaff side of Hollywood when it looks like Streep isn’t going to make a movie in any particular awards season…
Or to play. I have a friend who works as an audition pianist for various places, and he hates when someone brings in a Sondheim piece as their audition.
I love the songs he wrote for Dick Tracy. “More” is one of my all time favorite Sondheim songs, and the Oscar-nominated “Sooner or Later” also counts as one of his best songs. Of course, these songs were specifically meant to stand on their own. Even within the context of the movie they are performed as cabaret numbers with no connection to any narrative.
The cast of Glee has actually performed quite a few Sondheim songs. “Unworthy of Your Love” has not, IIRC, ever been featured on the show, but they did do “You Are Not Alone”. In that same episode they also did “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd and “I’m Still Here” from Follies, and in other episodes they’ve done “Being Alive” from Company, various songs from West Side Story, and a version of “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy.
I think they’re talking about songs where Sondheim wrote the music and the lyrics, or wrote the music. He wrote the lyrics for West Side Story, but Bernstein wrote the music, and Julie Stein wrote the music for Gypsy.
In addition to those already mentioned, Barbra Streisand recorded “Putting it Together” from Sunday in the Park with George.
That said, Sondheim does have a shortage of what used to be called “liftable ballads,” as compared to folks like Stephen Schwartz or Charlie Strouse, or even Andrew Lloyd Webber. As mentioned, this is both because his lyrics tend to be quite specific to the individual shows, and his music can be fiendishly difficult, even for professionals.
A criticism that has dogged Sondheim throughout his career is that he doesn’t write “hummable tunes.” He particularly hates that criticism; as he has said, “Anything that can be sung, can be hummed.” I think that response misses the point of the criticism just a little. “Hummable” in this context doesn’t just mean the literal “able to be hummed,” but something more like “the kind of song you walk out of the theater humming to yourself”–something more like “catchy.”
Some of his tunes, for what it’s worth, certainly are catchy in that way. The title song of “Into the Woods,” for one, as well as “You Are Not Alone” and “Agony.” But I do think it’s true that his ratio of those kind of catchy tunes is lower than most other musical theater composers. The musical challenges his songs present may be why, despite his long career, Into the Woods is only the third of his shows to be filmed–omitting West Side Story and Gypsy, for which he wrote only the lyrics.
Sweeney Todd was also made into a movie.
Yes, I was counting that. Still, you’re right that Into the Woods is actually the fourth Sondheim film, not the third. I had forgotten the film version of A Little Night Music.
The other one, of course, is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Yes, sorry, I completely misread what you were saying in your earlier post. (More coffee needed.)
No problem. My post was perhaps not exactly a miracle of clarity.
The post I was responding to was specifically about Sondheim’s lyrics, and I listed four different songs from four different musicals with lyrics and music by Sondheim that have been featured on Glee before mentioning West Side Story or Gypsy.
It is very hard for me to literally hum “Into the Woods”… it begs for “bump bah da da dadada!” 
Saw it and I liked it much better than the film version of Sweeney Todd. I agree the time jump is jarring, particularly with the Prince lusting over the Baker’s Wife that suddenly after his wedding and even though he’s never had any real attraction to her the numerous other times he’s seen her, but, in general, it worked, and I didn’t even mind Rapunzel’s survival so much.
I give it a B.
Though I’d have cast Cher as the witch. I thought Meryl’s best moment was “Of course I prefer a live cow so show me where it is and I’ll bring it back to life!” line- perfectly delivered.
Johnny Depp was less a cameo than a near distraction.
As a big fan of the musical, I missed 2 of my favorite songs that were cut No More and Ever After, but aside from that I liked it a lot. Emily Blunt made a fan of me. (had no idea who she was prior to this.) Corden was great, as was Streep. I loved the look of everything. I didn’t mind them cutting Rapunzel’s death, since it was really a metaphor for children leaving a sheltered home for their own lives to begin with, so changing it to be literally that wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be.
Other cuts (like Agony (reprise)) were no big deal, IMHO. I liked spinning the mysterious old man as a ghost rather than real, and appreciated the instrumental nod to No More even as I missed the song.