Hoagy Carmichael wrote "Skylark" for a Broadway version of the movie Young Man With a Horn in 1942, but it never made it past the development stage. Working with Johnny Mercer (Laura; "Day in, Day Out"; "Too Marvelous for Words"), Carmichael turned out one of his last great songs. Like all great Carmichael songs, his song with Mercer is essentially about nostalgia, about a longing for something that can never be again, but in "Skylark," the nostalgia is about something that has never been, about a longing for a greener field, a better life, a better world. Carmichael music, like all great Carmichael music, is rooted in the blues, in melodies and harmonies as old as music, but with the added poignancy of chromatic harmonies to make the ache all the greater. The melody of the refrain slowly descends from the dominant down to the tonic, seeming to wander in a reverie but actually moving purposefully over yearning harmonies to a cadence that is no resolution. The melody of the release is unutterly affecting principally because the harmonies it is set to are so heartrendingly beautiful. The coda finally resolves all the longing of the music by rising above the longing of the harmonies to the highest point in the singer's range and then moving quietly through a perfect cadence to the tonic.

© James Leonard, Rovi