"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. The best selling version was Paul Whiteman's Victor single, which made the top five.
It was the most popular song from Anything Goes at the start with hundreds of parodies.[1]
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.
Some of the lyrics were re-written by P. G. Wodehouse for the British version of Anything Goes.
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The following is a list of many of the references made in the song:
P. G. Wodehouse anglicised it for the British version of Anything Goes. Amongst other changes, he altered two lines from "You’re an O’Neill drama / You’re Whistler’s mama!" to "You’re Mussolini / You’re Mrs Sweeny")[2][3]
The "Washington vs. the Bunny" (season one, episode five) episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show features a version of the song performed for Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) by her very young son Ritchie. In that version, Ritchie mistakenly alters the lyrics from "You're the Mona Lisa" to "You're the Mommy Lisa".
The song played a major role in the M*A*S*H episode "The Joker Is Wild" whereupon the loser of a "jokeoff" in the 4077th had to sing the song without his bottoms (pants) in the mess hall. Alan Alda's character Hawkeye ultimately had to make good on said promise.
Also sung as the introduction by Paul Jones and arranged by Richard Rodney Bennett for the ITV series The Charmer starring Nigel Havers.
There are alternate "dirty lyrics," variously attributed to Cole Porter himself, Irving Berlin, or one of the myriad parodists of the song[4] [5],
"You're The Top!
You're Miss Pinkham's tonic (alt.: "a gin and tonic")
You're The Top!
You're a high colonic
You're the rhythmic beat (alt.: "burning heat")
Of a bridal suite in use
You're the mound (alt.: "breasts") of Venus
You're King Kong's penis
You're self-abuse!
"You're an arch
In the Rome collection
You're the starch
In a groom's erection
I'm a eunuch who
Has just been through an op
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're The Top!"