“I think of my songs as my little children, and I want them to have big lives,” she said. Bareilles, who just finished her third stint leading the “ Waitress” cast, clearly pays attention to the way the song has traveled since the musical opened nearly three years ago. “You get breathy confessional head-voice moments building to a belty chest-voice climax,” he added. Its emotional content, he said: “It has a classic arc from sadness and self-criticism to acceptance and triumph.” And the music offers singers a chance to show off their voices. SWV - Right There (Human Nature Mix) Tatyana Ali - Boy You Knoch Me Out. I will become yours and you will become mine, I choose you, I choose. Lyrics: Tell the world that we finally got it all right, I choose you. I asked my colleague, Jesse Green, the co-chief theater critic for The Times, what makes the song so coverable. I Choose You by Sara Bareilles Another perfect one for that bridal party processional song, I Choose You is an upbeat and fun number with all the right lyrics and tunes. Heather Headley, a Tony winner for “Aida,” put her version on a new album alongside standards like “Over the Rainbow.” Just last week, Kathryn Gallagher, an actress in the cast of the Broadway-bound “ Jagged Little Pill,” performed her own take, accompanied by a cello, at a Midtown bar, encouraged to do so, she said, by fans online. Then I started to notice it popping up on set lists. “The chasm between who we are, and who we thought we would be, is always something we’re negotiating.”Ĭovers of the song caught my attention when a video of a gut-punching version by a 14-year-old boy from western Pennsylvania went viral in the fall. Tell the world that we finally got it all right. The very first words of a lifelong love letter. I cant say Id even notice it was absent Cause I could live by the light in your eyes. “The range of who this song speaks to is much broader than I could have anticipated,” Ms. Let the bough break, let it come down crashing. The song, written for a pregnant, abused waitress, reflecting back on the dreams she did not achieve, has been claimed, unexpectedly, by men, by children, by singers of all sorts. Sara Bareilles says that when she wrote “She Used to Be Mine,” the 11 o’clock number from her Broadway musical “Waitress,” it seemed so insanely specific (“she is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie”) that she felt self-conscious performing it in concert.īut audiences have a way of making decisions for themselves. Sometimes, a song takes on a life of its own.