I'm set for love from head to toe
I'm set for love from head to toe is a song that Friedrich Hollaender composed in 1930 for the film The Blue Angel . The text is also from Hollaender. In the film, the song was sung by Marlene Dietrich in her film role of Lola Lola and became world famous for her interpretation.
The text describes her attraction and destructive effect on men from the perspective of the femme fatale Lola (" Men buzz around me ..."; "... when they burn ..."). At the same time, the interpreter asserts her innocence and naivety ("... I can't do that ..."; "... I can just love and nothing else "). Hollaender describes in his autobiography that he first composed the music. He then wrote the text, which he initially saw as a provisional solution. The film team was spontaneously enthusiastic and rejected their concerns about the text.
The song is a slow waltz , so it is in ¾ time, and has two stanzas, beginning with “ A mysterious shimmer …” and “ What trembles in my hands …”. But what has become particularly famous is the refrain, which begins with the title line, “ I'm set for love from head to toe ”. The refrain has the song form AABA , which is often used in popular music . Each of the four parts consists of eight bars, so that a total of 32 bars results. Hollaender composed the song in the key of F major, and so it appeared in the first print edition. In the film it is in D major, apparently in consideration of Dietrich's relatively low voice. In a first recording she sang it a semitone lower, in D flat major.
In the film, the song is heard during Professor Rath's visit to Lola's Variété. First, the band, the Weintraub Syncopators , plays an instrumental introduction. Then Lola sings the first verse. The subsequent refrain is interrupted by the director of the Variété after he and Rath have entered a box. The director introduces Rath to the audience as a guest of honor. Then Lola's singing starts again with the refrain. Finally she repeats the chorus without singing the second verse. During her performance, she adopts a lasciviously lascivious pose, sitting on a barrel. Their effect on Rath can be seen in his delighted face.
At the same time as the German version, the film team shot an English version of the film ( The Blue Angel ) with the same actors . In this version the song sounds with an English text under the title Falling in Love Again .
I am set to love from head to toe , which became one of Marlene Dietrich's most famous songs, which she sang over and over again throughout her career. Many other performers - including male ones - also included the song in their repertoire. It all started with the Comedian Harmonists in 1930 ( we are set for love from head to toe ). In the course of the revival of German-language hits and chansons of the 1920s and 1930s, numerous interpreters have followed in recent times, such as B. Margot Werner , Ute Lemper , Udo Lindenberg or Max Raabe .
literature
- Friedrich Hollaender: From head to toe. My life with text and music , edited and commented by Volker Kühn. Weidle Verlag, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-931135-17-9 , p. 221 ff.
- Friedrich Hollaender album . Ufaton-Verlag Berlin-Munich (no year).
- Ulrich Rügner: Film music in Germany between 1924 and 1934 . Olms, Hildesheim 1988, ISBN 3-487-07621-7 .