Cole Porter's "You're the Top" was the favorite song of audiences attending the 1934 stage musical, "Anything Goes." It's a stellar example of Cole Porter's genius for lyrics, with two shipboard characters on the SS American trying to outdo each other with compliments. This recording is Cole Porter himself singing. It is used in closing credits of "De-Lovely" the biopic of his life.
If that clip wasn't spectacular enough, listen to Ethel Merman and Frank Sinatra, two of the greatest singers ever, in this Great Show Tunes Bonus.
And then again there is this performance by Kelli Ripa and Paulie Litt from the TV sitcom "Hope and Faith, another Great Show Tunes Bonus??
Here are the words with Porter's expression of "best of the best" in 1934 with very creative rhyming.
The Coliseum
Louvre Museum
Melody from a symphony by Strauss
Bendel bonnet
Shakespeare's sonnets
Mickey Mouse
The Nile
The Tower of Pisa
the smile...on the Mona Lisa
Vincent Youmans
Mahatma Gandhi
Napoleon Brandy
Purple light of a summer night in Spain
National Gallery
Garbo's salary (alternately recorded as "Crosby's salary", a reference to Bing Crosby, who twice starred in film versions of Anything Goes)
Cellophane
Turkey dinner
The time of a Derby winner
Arrow Shirts collar
Coolidge Dollar (referencing the financial prosperity of the Roaring Twenties under US President Coolidge)
Fred Astaire
A drama by playwright Eugene O'Neill
Whistler's Mother
Camembert
Rose
Dante's Inferno
Waldorf salad
Irving Berlin
A Dutch Master
The nose of Jimmy Durante
Dance in Bali
Hot tamale
A painting by Botticelli
John Keats
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ovaltine
Boulder Dam
The Moon
Mae West's shoulder
G.O.P. (U.S. Republican Party)
Waldorf salad
Berlin ballad
Zuider Zee
Lady Astor
Broccoli
Steppes of Russia
Ritz hot toddy
Brewster body
Bishop Manning
Nathan panning
A night at Coney
The eyes of Irčne Bordoni
Tower of Babel
Whitney stable
Stein of beer
A dress from Saks Fifth Avenue
Next year's taxes
Stratosphere
Max Baer
Rudy Vallee
Phenolax (a 1930s laxative made from Phenolphthalein)
Drumstick lipstick
Irish Sweepstakes
Pepsodent
The pants on a Roxy usher
The nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire
