We’re talking clever this week – meaning the cleverest musical moments in songs that have graced the Broadway stage. I gave 20 on Monday, but 20 simply is not enough. Here are 20 more to indicate how clever some of our musical theater writers have been. In alphabetical order: 

“All I Need Is the Girl” (Gypsy) -- Tulsa dances with his imaginary partner, while Louise imagines it’s she. Little does she know that it’s the far more feminine June. How feminine? Louise is still in the pants she wore in the act – the one with the cow hooves painted on. 

“Barcelona” (Company) – Had anyone made the-morning-after-the-night-before the subject of a song? And if so, was there as imaginative an approach as the conversational one that Sondheim took? When Arthur Laurents famously said that “Sondheim’s songs are often little one-act plays,” this had to be what he had first and foremost in mind. 

 “Bits and Pieces” (Goodtime Charley) – Joan (as in “of Arc”) is the soldier, while Charley, the would-be royal for whom she’s working, isn’t. Here she dresses him for battle, as he comments on each piece of unfamiliar armor. So essential is the uniform in this number that this summer at Musicals-in-Mufti – which eschews costumes – included armor during this song. 

“Colorful” (Golden Boy) – When a hot-shot reporter asks hotter-shot boxer Joe Wellington about his being black, Joe minimizes and neutralizes the question by citing all the colors he’s been in his life: Green when he was naïve, blue when sad, and yellow when afraid. “But,” he decides, “black suits me best.” 

 “Echo Song” (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) – This almost didn’t make the list – not because it wasn’t clever enough, but because it’s only appeared in the 1971 revival. Good enough – especially for a song where Philia believes that the gods will provide answers through echoes – though Hero will do the echoing for them.

“Hey, There” (The Pajama Game) – Long before Patricia Routledge sang a “Duet for One,” John Raitt was doing just that, thanks to a dictaphone. How modern that must have seemed in 1954! And what a beautiful countermelody, no? 

“Hurry! It’s Lovely Up Here” (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) – Daisy Gamble is the type of lass who loves her flowers so much that she talks to them. Better for us: She sings to them, and gets some nifty floral imagery, courtesy of Alan Jay Lerner. 

“The Lees of Old Virginia” (1776) – John Adams loathes Richard Henry Lee. Because he’s one of those guys who insists on using three names? No, it’s because he’s so egocentric – as is proved by his incessant use of adverbs, because they incorporate his last name. 

 “Love in a New Tempo” (New Faces of 1968) – Don’t know this one? It’s worth the price of the original cast album (even though the song has a lousy ending). Then-New-Face Robert Klein told of not wanting to sing yet another song of unrequited love in a moony, self-pitying lyric OR melody. Instead he decides to sing, “I love you; why don’t you love me, too?” – not to a waltz or a ballad – but to a march worthy of John Philip Sousa. Hilarious – until that ending. 

 “Opening Doors” (Merrily We Roll Along) – Three nobodies in New York doin’ what they can to change that status. Nice how Charley’s typewriter clicks along to the melody that Frank is creating. But nicer still is Sondheim’s taking the pair through a fruitless audition for a big producer all the way to their auditioning actresses for their own revue. Best line comes from that fat-cat producer: “Maybe it’s me,” he says when turning down their show. Yeah, but if it’s your mistake, Mr. Producer, we’re the ones who are gonna suffer. 

 “The Seven Deadly Virtues” (Camelot) – The hardest task for any composer and lyricist is to write a song for a bad guy – because these people don’t readily sing. Who’d think that Mordred could or would – and could do so brilliantly? But then again, he had Lerner and Loewe to help him express himself. 

 “Sing” (A Chorus Line) -- One of the great clichés of couples deeply in love is that each finishes the other’s sentences. Edward Kleban decided to show a just-married, still-in-love Kristine and Al doing just that. 

“Someone in a Tree” (Pacific Overtures) – We’d already had one Japanese Rashomon on stage and film, but here was a completely different one. By the way, when Sondheim was once asked that his favorite composition was, he named this – though he later conceded that it was the first thing that came to mind when the writer asked him.

 “Sons” (The Rothschilds) – “Well,” you say, “it’s a good number, for we see a couple go from childless to a family of seven, but I wouldn’t say it was especially clever.” Granted – but it makes the list for a specific moment: Mayer Rothschild tells his son Nathan, “You don’t listen. You’re impatient.” The kid admits it, too, so Mayer advises, “Listen!” Then he sings “When a shopper says” and the lad immediately follows in song, “When a shopper says” – which we accept it as a musical round. But then Mayer says, “Nathan – listen!” -- showing us it wasn’t a musical convention, but a sheer interruption by the kid who talks more than listens. 

“So What Else Is New?” (Woman of the Year) – Okay, I’ll admit that in the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh, Gene Kelly danced with an animated mouse – but still, Fred Ebb was pretty clever 35 years later to have cartoonist Sam Craig converse with Katz, his feline creation, to collaborate and come up with their new character, Tessie Cat, with all the worst qualities of Lauren Bacall – er, Tess Harding. 

“Sunday” (Sunday in the Park with George) – All those people on the Island of the Grand Jatte from whom we’ve been hearing in bits and pieces for one full act finally come together as a unit – and an immortal painting. 

“Talent” (Smile) – What happens when contestants in a beauty pageant vie for superiority? A talent competition, of course – and Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlisch took us through the inevitable Country Christian singer, the ventriloquist, and even a chef to move us through the first rounf of the Young American Miss showdown. 

 “The Telephone Hour” (Bye Bye Birdie) – A most ironic title, for in 1960 when it debuted, The Bell Telephone Hour was one of the mlst civilized and erudite programs on television. It bore no relationship to the cacophony (however tuneful) that Charles Strouse and Lee Adams created. 

“They Both Reached for the Gun” (Chicago) – The show prided itself on using vaudeville conventions, but none was as smart as this one – where Billy Flynn became the ventriloquist and Roxie Hart the dummy. 

 “Words! Words! Words!” (Bajour) – For years, there’d been in vogue that “word association” game -- where a shrink fed a subject a certain word in hope of getting an answer that would disclose some psychologically buried information. Walter Marks, though, was the one who set it to music, and did a helluva lot of plot advancing in the process.

On Monday, we’ll see what you had to nominate as the most clever musical moments in Broadway history. (If I can assemble them all; my, a number of you wrote in!)

You may write Peter at pfilichia@aol.com