of those lines and lyrics that stick with you, made into pure but cherished phonetics, I'd like to spend a morbid second with this:

"the cement's just — for the weight, dear"

Mack the Knife is a story as old as song, originally written by Bertolt Brecht in 1928, but you wouldn't know that just from listening. I certainly didn't know it, listening to Rosemary Clooney growing up; a bop, no question, with no idea what the song was about — blood, or sharks? or gloves? or money?

But one line stands out, even among all the charm and sly smiles, that makes you take notice. Why is she singing so charmingly about something that... like, it has to mean a dead body, right? Disposing of a dead body in a frankly unceremonious way? What's the deeper meaning, Juliet, that you'll elucidate to bring the whole thing together?

There isn't one! There's a charm in the midcentury modern style of vocal storytelling where the actual lyrical content has no bearing on the tone; the adoption of older poems that had meaning once, now made to be merely a canvas for the concert of the singing, the bandleader, and the band. It's just a good song, and the depth of the depravity is at such a remove from the canniness and catchiness of the tune that we might as well live forever in that beat pause. The "just" explains away something as though it were any explanation at all. The "dear" at the end brings us back to the closeness, the connection of the moment, that thing more important than anything else. You, and I, and everyone else here tonight, sharing this moment. The cement's just for the weight, dear. 😘