Ya Got Trouble
| "Ya Got Trouble" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| from the album The Music Man | |
| Released | 1957 |
| Genre | Patter song[1] Show tune |
| Songwriter | Meredith Willson |
"Ya Got Trouble" is a patter song by Meredith Willson from the 1957 Broadway musical The Music Man and its subsequent film adaptations in 1962 and 2003.
The song is performed by con man "Professor" Harold Hill, posing as a bandleader and traveling salesman as he attempts to scam a small town in Iowa. In order to create demand for his musical instruments, he creates a moral panic around a new pool table in the town's billiard hall and the slippery slope that, without proper supervision, would lead their children to corruption.[2][3]
Composition
Willson considered eliminating a long piece of dialogue from his draft of The Music Man about the serious trouble facing River City parents. However, he realized it sounded like a lyric and transformed it into "Ya Got Trouble".[4][5]
Title variations
The song is sometimes listed as "(Ya Got) Trouble".[6][3] The original Broadway cast album lists the song title as "Trouble", both on the record jacket and label. "You Got Trouble" is a common misspelling of the song title.
See also
- Bevo – Non-alcoholic malt beverage or near beer
- Dan Patch – American Standardbred racehorse
- Fawcett Publications – American publishing company that first published the humor magazine Captain Billy's Whiz Bang
- Knickerbockers – Baggy-kneed breeches popular in the early 20th-century
- Piper cubeba – Species of flowering plant used in cubeb cigarettes
- Sen-Sen – Type of breath freshener
- Tailor-made cigarette
References
- ↑ Wolff 2024, p. 132.
- ↑ Holmes, Linda (2014). "Kids, Pants, Booze, Music: Trouble In River City And Always". NPR. Retrieved 2026-03-21.
- 1 2 Ruiz, Alexis Mikulski (2025). "Inside the Very Creepy 'Music Man' Moment in 'It: Welcome to Derry'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2026-03-21.
- ↑ Bloom & Vlastnik 2004, pp. 215–16.
- ↑ Carsello 2021, p. 13.
- ↑ Hischak 2008, p. 515.
Bibliography
- Bloom, Ken; Vlastnik, Frank (2004). Broadway musicals: the 101 greatest shows of all time. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. ISBN 978-1-57912-390-1.
- Carsello, Daniel (Fall 2021). ""But He Doesn't Know the Territory": The Story Behind Meredith Willson's The Music Man; Broadway Edition". The Bulletin of the Society for American Music. 47 (3). Pittsburgh: 13–14 – via ProQuest.
- Hischak, T.S. (2008). The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 9780195335330. Retrieved 2015-06-19.
- Wolff, Tamsen O. (2024). "8 'Imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds': Rap, Patter, and Hyper Diction in Musical Theatre". In Groth, Helen; Murphet, Julian (eds.). The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Sound Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-3995-0230-6.
Further reading
- Knapp, Raymond (2005). The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity. Princeton University Press. JSTOR j.ctv39x6z2. Retrieved 2026-03-11.
- Willson, Meredith (2020-09-22). "But He Doesn't Know the Territory": The Story behind Meredith Willson's The Music Man. University of Minnesota Press. doi:10.5749/j.ctv15kxfxv. ISBN 978-1-4529-6502-4. Retrieved 2026-03-11.