One diner patron’s view: “Goddammit!” – the reaction to hearing “What’s New Pussycat?” five times in a row, according to John Mulaney
The public’s view: 2.76 / 5.00
The story behind our next top ten hit reminds us that the descent into cultural vapidity started long before everyone was walking around with miniature distraction devices in their pockets. Its title phrase “What’s new pussycat?” originated when Hollywood producer Charles K. Feldman overheard Warren Beatty greeting a girlfriend in this manner on the phone. This barely even qualifies as an anecdote, as it was unsurprising that Beatty would have a line like that in his repertoire. It isn’t like he was the pope. However, Feldman thought this was a comedic goldmine and that other people would also be easily amused. He gave Beatty’s expression a life of its own, stretching it farther than anyone could have imagined or wanted.
First the phrase became the driving motivation of Feldman’s 1965 film, What’s New Pussycat?, about a man who calls every woman he meets “pussycat”. (Try that today and see what happens.) The movie spawned the theme song that we are here to discuss, and What’s New Pussycat? would later also become the title of a Tom Jones musical play. In 2009, comedian John Mulaney did a popular stand-up bit about repeatedly playing “What’s New Pussycat?” on the jukebox at the Salt & Pepper Diner. It took several decades, with lots of casualties along the way, but finally – for the first time ever – Mulaney found a way to make this inside joke humorous to someone besides Charles K. Feldman.
To me, “What’s New Pussycat?” belongs in the same category as Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs”. It has a terrible concept at its root, but then everything else is done with such perfection that you have to admire the resulting product even if you don’t enjoy hearing it. Consider the constraints that Burt Bacharach and Hal David were working under when they wrote this. This was to be the theme music for Feldman’s comedy movie that, from what I can gather, featured talented big-name actors but a so-so screenplay. The song needed to have the same questionable title as the film, and it ideally needed to repeat that title numerous times. Bacharach & David weren’t at liberty to call their tune “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music”, nor could they hand Feldman a solemn protest song about Vietnam. The lyrics, at least, were going to be pretty bad no matter what they came up with.
The smartest thing that anyone did for “What’s New Pussycat?” was to recruit Tom Jones, though Bacharach first had to convince him that it wasn’t a joke. Jones was probably the only man of his generation who could deliver multiple silly compliments about a woman’s “pussycat nose” in a way that was both classy and sexy. Even Warren Beatty would be on thin ice if he expressed such a weirdly intense interest in a lady’s nostrils. This song, more than any other, helped build Jones’s mystique. He became known as a performer who could give any material a level of seriousness and gravitas, while at the same time implicitly acknowledging how ridiculous some of it was.
The Tom Jones mystique is even part of my family’s lore. My grandmother and grandfather held sharply diverging views of the singer, and any mention of him was taboo when we visited their house. Likewise, when any of us grandkids asked why their stereo didn’t work, all of the adults in the room would grow quiet and someone would quickly change the subject. The details are murky, but I later learned that the broken stereo was connected in some way to the Tom Jones controversy. I suspect that the Salt & Pepper Diner’s jukebox would also have suffered permanent damage if Grandpa had been there on the same day as John Mulaney.
In some respects, “What’s New Pussycat?” was quite a feat. Bacharach’s music perfectly captures the frivolity of a comedy movie, and Jones’s singing is hard to top. I’d rate it a 9 out of 10 on that basis. On the other hand, it uses the word “pussycat” a dozen times before it is even halfway through. That merits a 1 out of 10. Let’s take the average.
My rating: 5 / 10
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