I Can’t Get Started

This is the song that Sookie has chosen for her wedding, and is playing it for Lorelai, Rory, and Michel to hear.

“I Can’t Get Started” is a 1936 popular song, composed by Vernon Duke with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was introduced in the film Ziegfield Follies of 1936, performed by Bob Hope and Eve Arden. The 1937 version by jazz trumpeter Bunny Berigan went to #10 in the charts and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975.

Sookie is playing Ella Fitzgerald’s version, which was included on her 1953 album, Sweet and Hot. It’s also on her 1973 live album, Newport Jazz Festival: Live at Carnegie Hall. This album also includes her song, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”, which was previously used as an episode title on Gilmore Girls.

Lorelai protests that the lyrics are far too depressing for a wedding song, being about a relationship that will never get off the ground:

I’ve flown around the world in a plane
I’ve settled revolutions in Spain
The North Pole I have charted, but I can’t get
Started with you

Around the golf course I’m under par
And all the movies want me to star
I’ve got a house, a show place, but I get no
Place with you

You’re so supreme, lyrics I write of you
Scheme, just for a sight of you
Dream, both day and night of you
And what good does it do?

In 1929 I sold short
In England I’m presented at court
But you’ve got me downhearted, cause I can’t get
Started with you

You’re so supreme, lyrics I write of you
Scheme, just for a sight of you
Dream, both day and night of you
And what good does it do?

It’s been chosen as the title of the episode, so we know that the season will end with at least one romantic whump!