Company Lyrics – All Songs from the Musical

"Company" – The Musical Guide & Song Meanings

Review

How can a musical feel like a party and a panic attack at the same time? “Company” does it by refusing to move in a straight line. It circles. It repeats. It interrupts itself with doorbells, voicemails, and married advice that lands like confetti and shrapnel. The plot is a stack of encounters around a single birthday, and the lyrics behave the same way: quick observations, sharp pivots, social chatter that suddenly turns accusatory.

Sondheim’s writing makes intimacy sound like negotiation. The couples do not “teach” Bobby what love is; they demonstrate how people barter for closeness using jokes, routines, and ritualized complaints. In song after song, the rhyme can feel like a grin that won’t quite settle on the face. When the score turns tender, it is not because anyone has become more virtuous. It is because the show finally admits that wanting is a kind of hunger, and hunger is embarrassing.

Musically, “Company” is built from styles that comment on the characters more than they express them. A bright, almost commercial snap can be a mask for dread. A patter explosion can be a defense mechanism. Even the so-called “anthem” moments arrive with caveats, as if the music itself does not trust permanent answers.

How It Was Made

The seed was not a love story. It was a set of short marriage plays. George Furth’s one-acts gave the creative team a gallery of adult situations, and Harold Prince saw a musical structure hiding inside them: a central observer moving between other people’s relationships. Sondheim has described the attitude of the piece as deeply tied to Furth’s material, with the songs written to match the playlets’ tone rather than impose a conventional arc.

That origin matters because it explains why the show’s songs do not politely “arrive.” They crash in. In “Company,” a scene can freeze and a number can suddenly take over the room, like thought bubbles turning physical. The form is the point: a single person listening too hard to everyone else’s advice, until it starts to sound like noise.

The cast album has its own mythology, preserved on film. In May 1970, the original company recorded at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio, and the session became a high-pressure portrait of what it costs to make something sound effortless. The documentary “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” is still one of the best arguments for why lyrics are performance, not just text on a page.

Key Tracks & Scenes

"Company" (Bobby and Company)

The Scene:

A birthday apartment. Voices pile up. Greetings blur into a single pulse. The room behaves like a crowded headspace, with Bobby inside it.

Lyrical Meaning:

The title word keeps changing temperature. It can mean friendship, surveillance, comfort, obligation. The lyric’s repetition becomes the show’s first warning: community is not always calm.

"The Little Things You Do Together" (Joanne and Couples)

The Scene:

Harry and Sarah bicker, flirt, and spar. The action freezes as Joanne steps forward, like a spotlight cutting through a domestic scuffle.

Lyrical Meaning:

The song makes marriage sound like craftsmanship and attrition. The “little things” are not cute. They are the daily devices couples use to stay fused, even when they are furious.

"You Could Drive a Person Crazy" (Kathy, April, Marta)

The Scene:

In a living-room haze, three girlfriends appear as a tight vocal unit, harmonies crisp against Bobby’s evasions.

Lyrical Meaning:

The lyric is comedic, but the complaint is real: emotional ambiguity has a body count. The Andrews Sisters style is a trapdoor, making bitterness sound charming until it stops being charming.

"Another Hundred People" (Marta)

The Scene:

A park bench. The city is a machine that keeps feeding strangers into each other’s orbit. People cross, miss, collide, vanish.

Lyrical Meaning:

This is New York as chorus and condition. The lyric’s forward momentum mirrors the problem: there is always someone new to meet, which can feel like freedom or like avoidance.

"Getting Married Today" (Amy)

The Scene:

Morning of the wedding. Amy is in a dress that already feels like a trap. A blessing chorus presses in as her thoughts accelerate beyond control.

Lyrical Meaning:

The famous speed is not a stunt. It is panic made articulate. The lyric’s precision makes the fear sharper, because every argument sounds rational when you can say it fast enough.

"The Ladies Who Lunch" (Joanne)

The Scene:

A nightclub table. Joanne drinks loudly, picks fights with the air, and then the room drops into blackout. A single spotlight isolates her as she raises a toast that curdles.

Lyrical Meaning:

The lyric weaponizes observation. Joanne is mocking a social class, but she is also indicting her own routines. The jokes land because they are self-harm dressed as sophistication.

"Being Alive" (Bobby)

The Scene:

After Joanne’s proposition and Bobby’s refusal, the stage clears. The party noise drains away. He is left with the question he has been dodging, and it will not be polite.

Lyrical Meaning:

The lyric starts as a list of demands and ends as an admission of need. It is not romance. It is consent to be changed by another person, even when that change is inconvenient.

Live Updates

As of January 2026, “Company” is not running on Broadway. The most recent Broadway revival (the gender-swapped Marianne Elliott staging) ended July 31, 2022, and its North American tour ran from October 8, 2023 through October 6, 2024. The title remains one of the most frequently programmed Sondheim works in licensed and regional contexts, partly because its set of vignettes lets directors lean into contemporary casting and social textures without rewriting the engine of the piece.

In the 2025 to 2026 season window, the most visible activity is at the level of regional and amateur engagements, including spring 2026 bookings in London-area community theatre ecosystems and other local producers. That is the show’s current life: a repertory classic that keeps getting reinterpreted, not a single “official” commercial run that defines it for everyone.

If you are tracking the music rather than the marquee, the listening culture is active. The original cast recording remains widely available through label reissues, and the documentary record of the 1970 album session continues to circulate via major home-video and streaming platforms, keeping the writing process legible for new audiences.

Notes & Trivia

• The show began as George Furth one-act marriage playlets before Harold Prince proposed a musical structure with a central observer.
• The original Broadway production opened April 26, 1970 at the Alvin Theatre and ran through January 1, 1972.
• The original set famously used working elevators and vertical playing areas to underline isolation inside a crowded city.
• Dean Jones replaced Anthony Perkins early in the original rehearsal process, then left the run in May 1970 and was replaced by Larry Kert.
• The original cast album was recorded at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio on May 3, 1970, produced by Thomas Z. Shepard.
• “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” documents the recording session and turned the making of a cast album into a narrative about stamina, standards, and precision under stress.

Reception

“Company” has always been a critic’s magnet because the lyrics give reviewers something to hold: the language is behavioral, not decorative. Early audiences argued about its lack of a traditional plot, then later generations treated that structure as the innovation. Modern revivals tend to be judged on whether they sharpen the show’s social anxieties or soften them into nostalgia.

“‘Company,’ Stephen Sondheim’s gimlet ode to the eternal fear of shrivelling up and dying alone …”

“Company is one of the great grown-up musicals.”

“Staking out the intersection of theatre, audio recording, and cinema, ‘Original Cast Album: Company’ illuminates all three art forms.”

Quick Facts

• Title: Company
• Year: 1970 (original Broadway production)
• Type: Concept musical (vignette structure)
• Music & Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
• Book: George Furth
• Original Broadway director: Harold Prince
• Original Broadway staging: Michael Bennett
• Orchestrations (notably associated): Jonathan Tunick
• Original cast album recording: Recorded May 3, 1970 at Columbia 30th Street Studio; produced by Thomas Z. Shepard
• Selected notable placements: “The Ladies Who Lunch” spotlighted in a nightclub blackout; “Getting Married Today” as wedding-morning panic; “Being Alive” as post-party reckoning
• Album status: Original Broadway cast recording in continued reissue circulation; documentary “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” preserves the recording process on film

Frequently Asked Questions

Is “Company” a plot-driven musical?

It is structured as a sequence of vignettes around Bobby’s birthday and his relationships with five married couples and three girlfriends. The emotional through-line is the plot.

Who wrote the lyrics to “Company”?

Stephen Sondheim wrote both the music and the lyrics, with the book written by George Furth.

What is “Being Alive” really about?

It is Bobby’s shift from controlling fantasies about partnership to accepting the risk of intimacy. The lyric moves from objections to surrender, without pretending that surrender is easy.

Is there a filmed version worth watching?

The essential screen document is “Original Cast Album: ‘Company’” (1970), which captures the pressure and craft behind the original cast recording session.

Was the recent Broadway revival gender-swapped?

Yes. The Marianne Elliott staging reimagined Bobby as Bobbie, reframing social pressure around marriage without changing the show’s core mechanics.

Is “Company” touring in 2026?

The most recent North American tour concluded in October 2024. Current activity is primarily regional and licensed productions rather than a continuing national tour.

Key Contributors

Sources: Music Theatre International; The Sondheim Society; IBDB; Playbill; The New Yorker; The Guardian; New York Theatre Guide; Wikipedia; Masterworks Broadway; Criterion Collection.