It's time for another lesson. Here are some songs teaching a lesson or giving a lecture.
The first is actually a love song - young Rolf who is 17 years old - sings Sixteen-Going On-Seventeen to Lisle in Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music.
'You are 16 going on 17, fellows will fall in line (queue up to woo you). Eager young lads and rogues and cads (girls, learn to avoid these types) will offer you food and wine. Totally unprepared are you to face a world of men (mark the inversion from 'you are totally unprepared').
'Timid and shy and scared are you of things beyond your ken (things you don't know).
'You need someone older and wiser telling you what to do. I am 17 going on 18. I'll take care of you!' (Boys, learn this song and sing it to your girlfriends, but remember to substitute your own age.) Next, from Bernstein & Sondheim's West Side Story, the teenage gang the Jets sing Gee, Officer Krupke in a social satire of American juvenile delinquents (learn that term, but don't become one).
Riff tells the policeman, Officer Krupke, the reasons - family and social background - why he landed up on the streets, and is referred in turn to the Judge, the Psychiatrist ('Head-shrinker'), and Social Worker.
Some lines have dark humour: 'My Daddy beats my Mommy (that's wife abuse). 'My Mommy clobbers me (child abuse).
