"You're the Top"

From the Wikipedia page:

"You're the Top" is a Cole Porter song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. It is about a man and a woman who take turns complimenting each other.

It was the most popular song from Anything Goes at the start with hundreds of parodies.

The lyrics are particularly significant because they offer a snapshot as to what was highly prized in the mid-1930s, and demonstrate Porter's rhyming ability.

Porter's own 1934 recording of it was just recently added to the United States National Recording Registry.


Here are Bing Crosby and the 28-year-old Ethel Merman singing "You're the Top" in the 1936 film version (also know as Tops Is the Limit:


Time was not kind to her. She was sort of cute back in the day. Same nutty voice and crazy eyes, but not bad! Kind of a Christina Aguilera thing going on there. And, oh yeah, we're drinking it up in the post-Prohibition-era world aboard a luxury liner on a long ocean voyage, so anything goes!

From the 1946 Porter biopic Night and Day, here are Cary Grant and Texan Ginny Simms (San Antonio) doing their take on "You're the Top." Cary Grant is surprisingly good. While I could never believe he is Cole Porter, I can believe he is playing that piano. I think this has been colorized:


The song was also covered by Barbra Streisand for the 1972 film What's Up, Doc?: