Is That All There Is?

This song alternates between spoken narration and the sung chorus. It's about a woman sunk in chronic boredom, perhaps depressed, to the point where she is not impressed with some of life's greatest spectacles. It's rather macabre. First, she watches her house burn down and asks, "Is that all there is to a fire?" Second, she goes to "The Greatest Show On Earth" and wonders, "Is that all there is to a circus?" Third, she meets a boy, falls in love and they break up. "Is that all there is to love?" she wonders.

This was written by the mighty songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose hits include "Jailhouse Rock" and "Stand By Me." Leiber, the lyricist in the duo, based the words on the German writer Thomas Mann's 1896 short fiction story Disillusionment. A quick read will reveal that much of the lyric comes straight from the story, right down to a child watching a fire and the question, "Is that all there is to it?"

Leiber and Stoller wrote the song with entirely spoken lyrics, essentially a recitation. The changed it to add a singable chorus after pitching it to Georgia Brown, a British singer who wanted to perform it on her UK TV special Georgia's Back. When they played her the song, Brown said, "It's wonderful. I love the stories, but I gotta have something to sing." Leiber and Stoller obliged. She sang it on the special, which aired on May 13, 1967. No footage exists because the BBC recorded over it to save tape, which was expensive. Leiber and Stoller pitched the song to other artists, hoping to get a proper recording. The first to release it was Leslie Uggams, who included it on her 1968 album What's An Uggams? but didn't issue it as a single. Uggams is an actress as well as a singer, which helped because the spoken parts are essentially acting. They kept pitching the song until it reached Peggy Lee, another actress/singer who was very popular in the 1940s and 1950s (she recorded the most popular version of "Fever") but had trailed off in the 1960s. "When it was played for Peggy, she said, 'That's my life story. How did you know all that?'" Mike Stoller recalled in a Songfacts interview. "She said, 'If you give this song to anybody else, I'll break all your pencils.'" Lee's version was released as a single in 1969 and was a surprise hit, going to #11 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. "Peggy's is really the essential version of that song," Stoller said.