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This month we are marking the centenary of Nelson Riddle, perhaps the greatest of all arrangers of popular song. That's what Frank Sinatra thought, and we cite "I've Got the World on a String" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" as merely the obvious examples. But Sinatra and Riddle rescued a lot of other songs over the years - songs that had once been hits and then been forgotten, songs that had been in hit shows but no one had noticed, songs that had been in the stage version but dropped for the movie adaptation... But they rarely transformed...

As we approach the first anniversary of The Mark Steyn Club, we'll be presenting some musical celebrations as part of the festivities, so do keep an eye on our home page as the days go by. I've always thought of our Song of the Week as perhaps our least controversial department, if only by comparison with all the war and politics and whatnot all over the rest of the site. So I was interested to discover our musical offerings are as toxic as everything else around here. Late on Friday, having brought a ten-million dollar suit against me and lost...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Adolph Green, whose six-decade collaboration with Betty Comden helped create such joyous stage celebrations of New York as ``On the Town'' and ``Wonderful Town'' as well as the classic movie musical ``Singin' in the Rain,'' has died. He was 87. Green died at his Manhattan home Wednesday night, his son, Adam, said Thursday. On Broadway, Comden and Green (the billing was always alphabetical) worked most successfully with composers Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne and Cy Coleman. The duo wrote lyrics and often the books for more than a dozen shows, many of them built around such stars...