From the operetta “Bitter Sweet”, 1929
Words and music by Noel Coward
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
Lyrics
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay, Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay
We are the most effectual
Intellectual movement of the day
Our moral standards sway, like Missis Tanqueray
And we are theoretically most aesthetically
Eager to display
The fact that we’re aggressively and excessively
Anxious to destroy all the snobbery
And hob-nobbery of the Hoi-Polloi.
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay
It’s mental washing day, and come what may
We’ll scrub until the nation’s morals shrink away.
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay
Though we are languid in appearance
We’re in the vanguard, we feel we can guard
The cause of art
We shall ignore all interference
For our complacence
With this renaissance is frightfully smart
Please do not think us unrelenting
Our charming frolic with the symbolic
Is meek and mild
We merely spend our time preventing
Some earnest stripling
From liking Kipling instead of Wilde
Now that we find the dreary nineteenth century is closing,
We mean to start the twentieth in ecstasies of posing.
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay
It’s mental washing day, and come what may
We’ll scrub until the nation’s morals shrink away.
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay