What's New, Pussycat?

So let's talk about "What's New Pussycat."

"What's New Pussycat" was written for a 1965 Peter Sellers movie by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and performed most famously by renowned panty magnet Tom Jones, featuring a famous pickup line by renowned playboy Warren Beatty, who was supposed to star in the movie until he and Woody Allen fought too much for control of the plot.  Neither Jones, Beatty, nor the song has aged particularly well, but even outside of the somewhat patronizing, sexist lyrics, for which it's most famous, this song doesn't really make much logical sense musically.

"What's New Pussycat" starts out in the key of D major, with a classic waltz tempo and a great whomping timpani/bass sound, along with ukelele and harpsichord to hammer home the "wacky 60s movie" ideal.  And Jones really sells it - when this came out he hadn't yet started his legendary unbuttoned-shirt Vegas performances, but you can hear it coming down the pike with his dramatic, crashing "WHAT'S new pussycat":

What's new, pussy cat? Whooaaoaoa
D           G          A     A 

What's new, pussy cat? Whooaaoaoaooooa
D           G          A     A   D

It then takes four bars (two of I, two of II), to transition up to what you think is going to be the key of A:

Pussy cat, pussy cat, I've got flowers
A          A/E        Cmaj7

And lots of hours to spend with you!
Cmaj7                Bb

So go and powder your cute little pussy cat nose!
Bb

I should add here that while the backing orchestra is playing a straight B flat major chord, Jones's vocal line raises the 4th tone to an E natural, and changes the 2nd tone from a C natural to a C sharp on "cute", creating a tense dissonance between his E natural and the orchestra's F natural in places - I think this was intended to evoke his desire for the aforementioned pussycat but honestly, it comes off to me (and maybe this is just me speaking from the 21st century and I'd have a different opinion back in 1965) as really creepy.  Sort of like your creepy uncle - especially with the lyrics about "cute little pussy cat nose", and the way that "nose" falls on the last beat of the bar.

But then, after that weirdness, it goes back to a "normal song":

Pussy cat, pussy cat, I love you!
A          A/E        Dmaj7  C#min     

Yes        I          do!
Bmin       E          C#min  F#min

You and your pussy cat nose!
Bmin         E               A

The remainder of this song repeats the same chord pattern/sections.  The chorus of this song is 12 bars, counting the transition to the verse, the verse is 14 bars, and the bridge is 12 again.

It really almost feels like the verse ("Pussy cat, pussy cat, I've got flowers..") was thrown in at some other time, or was a leftover from another song that didn't have enough strength to work on its own - it tonally doesn't match the chorus or the bridge, and there's two extra bars thrown in as well.  Sort of like Bacharach had a half-written cutesy waltz song lying around, then came home from the strip club one night feeling randy and tossed off a lascivious, dissonant, almost stalker-ish feeling, verse with the way the trombones blare in after "nose".

And that was probably part of the point - the movie "What's New Pussycat", as stated above, was originally going to be a Warren Beatty vehicle, based more on his own real-life legendarily slutty personality than any of his previous roles, and written by Woody Allen, but due to conflicts of opinion Peter O'Toole (of all people!) ended up playing the Beatty part.  But the song doesn't really match the movie - the plot of the movie is that the Beatty character (a notorious womanizer trying to stay faithful to his fiancee) asks his psychiatrist (Peter Sellers) for help because beautiful women keep throwing themselves at him, and the psychiatrist is unable to help because he's stalking a woman who is also in love with Beatty, and then they all end up in the same place for a vacation and kooky mid-60s sexual revolution hijinks ensue.

So shouldn't the song used for this not have been a song that basically musically and lyrically slobbers all over the women in general, but something like "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, or hell, as long as we're being anachronistic, maybe "Don't Stand So Close To Me" by the Police?  The song doesn't get the point of the movie, which is that yes he wants to slobber all over the women, but he is TRYING HIS DAMNEDEST NOT TO.

That's not to say that it doesn't try to convey this - the "Pussy cat, pussy cat, I love you" bridge tries to sound more clean and sweet than any of the rest of the song, but the lyrics don't match it, and Jones is nearly unbuttoning his shirt as he croons "nose" before romping back into the "What's new, pussy cat?" singalong chorus.

Ultimately, "What's New Pussy Cat" is a product of its time, and of the raging egos that helped to spawn it, but as a song, it succumbs to its barely-contained lust, and unlike the movie, it doesn't leave quite enough to the imagination.