In the popular Broadway jukebox musical "Jersey Boys," the story of Frankie Castelluccio, later Frankie "Valli," unfolds, depicting a lead character with friends caught in a few bad deals with the mob that cause him to go solo despite his success with The Four Seasons. As the musical retells, Valli released band mate Bob Gaudio's risky song "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" as a solo artist after leaving The Four Seasons, which sparked criticism and discussion before taking off as a hit and reaching number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a week. Extremely successful as a quartet, 29 Top Hits with The Four Seasons mark a comparable record with bands like The Beatles (so argues the musical). The musical narrates that the band had struggled with finding a particular sound that worked for them and that listeners would love, despite their harmonies and Valli's powerful falsetto.
Departing from the style that made The Four Seasons famous, as in "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like A Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" signifies, in a sense, the dying of a version of the English language, in a parallel fashion to Panzera capturing to Barthes the dying of a particular form of the French language in his singing. As a song that had to be fought for just to get any airtime, luckily for us, this song somehow slipped through the cracks and caught on in popularity once people got used to its meter and dramatic expressivity. Valli's voice, his grain, embodies love and longing that he had for his divorced wife who left him due to his constant touring/traveling with the band and his subsequent girlfriend whom he left because she was getting in the way of his relationship with his daughter. The narrative structure of the play highlights the four distinct voices, and attached stories, of the four band members of The Four Seasons, linking their voices with their experiences and interpretations of how the band formed and broke up. When listening for the grain of the voice and attempting to think of examples, Frankie Valli and this theatrical version of his story came to mind. This musical shows how the grain of the voice can be associated with narrative, with tellings and retellings of stories from different perspectives and with different emphases, with different intonations and inflections, with different voices.
Revision:
We can use the popular Broadway jukebox musical “Jersey Boys,” which features the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, as a lens through which we may better understand Barthes’s music philosophy, specifically regarding voice, language and culture. As “Jersey Boys” retells, Valli released band mate Bob Gaudio's risky song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" as a solo artist after leaving The Four Seasons. The musical narrates the band’s struggle finding a particular sound that worked for them and that listeners loved, despite their harmonies and Valli's powerful falsetto. Departing from the style that made The Four Seasons famous, as in "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like A Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" signifies, in a sense, the dying of a version of the English language, in a parallel fashion to Panzera’s voice capturing the death of contemporary French language.
The narrative structure of the play highlights four distinct voices of the four band members from The Four Seasons, attaching their voices to their experiences, songs and interpretations of how the band formed and broke up. This musical shows how grain of the voice can be associated with narrative, with tellings and retellings of stories from different perspectives and with different emphases, with different intonations and inflections, with different voices. Valli's voice, his grain, embodies love and longing. This unique voice contributed to Valli’s hit success, as not only did it resonate with the audience but also embodied the cultural longing at the time. Along with the words, language, music and culture were bound; after all, JL Austin informs us that "our word is our bond."
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