The End of Summer Lyrics — Baby

Song Overview

"The End of Summer" belongs to Baby, but not in the neat, original-Broadway way the title might suggest. The song was written later for the 2004 Paper Mill Playhouse revision, then folded into the licensed score that many later productions use. Dramatically, it lands at a bruised point in Act Two, after Arlene's loss, and gives Lizzie, Arlene, and Pam a shared space to mark the season turning. That title does real work. Summer ends, youth shifts, certainty goes with it. The number plays like a soft weather report for the whole show.

Review and Highlights

"The End of Summer" is one of those late-added musical numbers that feels less like a patch and more like a missing pane finally dropped into place. Baby already knew how to write pregnancy from three angles - reckless, hopeful, and weary - but this trio gives the women a shared reflective moment that the 1983 opening-night score did not have. That matters. After so much comic traffic, medical stress, and marital pressure, the show suddenly stops long enough to listen to change itself.

The number works because it is not merely seasonal decoration. Autumn in this scene is loss, transition, and maturity arriving without asking permission. Lizzie is still moving toward birth. Pam is still caught in the hard machinery of wanting a child. Arlene has just lost hers. Put those three voices together and the song becomes a conversation about time rather than a simple mood piece. According to theater databases and licensed plot materials, the scene sits after Alan's "Easier to Love" and before Lizzie and Danny reconnect in "Two People in Love." That placement gives it a hinge function. It clears emotional space after grief and before decision.

Key Takeaways

• It is a later-added Act Two trio for Lizzie, Arlene, and Pam.
• The title links weather, adulthood, and grief in one clean image.
• The song helps balance the score by centering the women together.
• Its strength comes from tone and placement rather than showy theatrics.

Baby - revised stage musical number - diegetic in dramatic effect. The song functions as a reflective trio after Arlene's miscarriage and before the plot moves back toward Lizzie and Danny. It matters because it lets the women hold the stage together, not as rivals or neat contrasts, but as people living through different versions of hope and loss at the same time.

Creation History

Baby opened on Broadway on December 4, 1983 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, with a book by Sybille Pearson, music by David Shire, and lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. "The End of Summer," though, was not part of that original Broadway score. Theater history sources identify it as a song written for the 2004 Paper Mill Playhouse production, after which it entered the revised version of the show and became part of the score available for licensing. That gives the number an unusual history. It is not an archival leftover from 1983, and it is not a random replacement either. It is a later answer to a structural need in the piece. By the time of subsequent productions and the revised score tracked by theater databases, the song had settled into Act Two as a trio for Lizzie, Arlene, and Pam.

Lyricist Analysis

Maltby tends to be very good at songs that sound conversational while still carrying a formal spine, and a title like "The End of Summer" suggests that same instinct at work. Even without a widely circulated lyric sheet, the dramatic function points toward a language of observation rather than argument. This is not a song that needs a thesis. It needs atmosphere, shared recognition, and small turns in feeling.

The title itself is strong lyric writing. It is plain, seasonal, almost domestic, but it opens into metaphor immediately. Summer can mean youth, freedom, illusion, fertility, the easier phase before consequences settle in. The phrase also has built-in musical softness - open vowels, gentle consonants, no sharp comic bite. For a trio after loss, that sound matters. The song likely depends on blended thought and parallel reflection more than on patter or argumentative exchange.

In Baby, the best lyrics often let everyday speech reveal larger emotional patterns. "Patterns" does it through repetition. "Easier to Love" does it through plain confession. "The End of Summer" appears to work through image and shared mood. Different tool, same house style.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

In the revised version of Baby, the song arrives after Pam tells Lizzie that Arlene has lost the baby and after Lizzie visits Arlene in the hospital. The trio gathers emotional fallout that the earlier Broadway shape handled more briskly. Lizzie is still pregnant and moving forward. Pam is still caught in the strain of assisted conception. Arlene is recovering from a loss that changes the emotional temperature of the whole story. The song lets those threads sit together before the show returns to decisions, reunions, and final movement.

Song Meaning

The meaning of "The End of Summer" is transition under pressure. The season changes, but what the song really marks is innocence thinning out. For Lizzie, adulthood is coming fast. For Pam, hope has become labor. For Arlene, the future has suddenly gone quiet in a way she did not expect. The number holds all three states at once. That is why the title works so well. It does not scream tragedy. It names a season. Then the scene lets the audience feel how much can disappear inside a season ending.

Annotations

The End of Summer

The title is the central metaphor. Summer suggests warmth, motion, possibility, campus life, late youth, even a kind of suspended time. Its ending signals more than weather. It signals a crossing into consequence.

Because the song is a trio for Lizzie, Arlene, and Pam, its structure matters almost as much as its words. Baby usually builds contrast by cutting among couples. Here, the women share one frame. That creates a different dramatic truth: their situations are not identical, but they rhyme.

Theme and message

The song's main theme is female experience across different stages of expectation and disappointment. Pregnancy is not treated as a single story. It becomes a set of overlapping realities - anticipation, grief, resilience, and uncertainty.

Emotional tone

The tone is reflective, subdued, and mature. Not numb, not sentimental. More like the stillness after hard news, when people finally have room to hear themselves think.

Cultural and historical touchpoints

The addition of this number in the 2004 revision says something about musical theater craft. Later versions of shows often try to sharpen emotional continuity, especially around women whose interior lives were once sketched more economically. This song appears to do exactly that, giving Baby a more explicit bridge through Arlene's loss and the season's passage.

Production and musical writing

As a trio, the song likely depends on vocal contrast and overlap rather than dramatic confrontation. That gives Shire room for layered feeling - one voice carrying forward motion, one carrying fatigue, one carrying grief. In a score full of duets and character solos, a women's trio at this point changes the texture in a useful way.

Symbols and key phrases

The dominant symbol is the season itself. No ornate image system needed. The end of summer says enough: the light changes, routines return, the body remembers time, and people cannot stay where they were.

One reason the number is effective is its modesty. It does not try to become the score's big anthem. It acts more like a tide line, showing where the story has reached.

Technical Information (Quick Facts)

• Song: The End of Summer
• Artist: Commonly staged as a trio for Lizzie, Arlene, and Pam in revised productions of Baby
• Featured: Lizzie Fields, Arlene McNally, Pam Sakarian
• Composer: David Shire
• Producer: No original 1983 commercial cast-album producer credit applies to this song because it was added later for the revision
• Release Date: Written for the 2004 Paper Mill Playhouse production and carried into the revised licensed score
• Genre: Musical theater, reflective trio, Act Two transition number
• Instruments: Broadway pit-style accompaniment in revised stage use
• Label: No original Broadway commercial release documented for the song as part of the 1984 cast album
• Mood: Reflective, autumnal, bruised, calm
• Track #: Appears in revised Act Two listings after "Easier to Love" and before "Two People in Love"
• Language: English
• Album: Not part of the original 1984 Baby cast album; documented in later revised production materials
• Music style: Contemporary Broadway ensemble writing with introspective trio texture
• Poetic meter: Not reliably published; dramatic evidence suggests speech-led lyricism shaped around blended trio phrasing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is "The End of Summer" in the original 1983 Broadway version of Baby?

No. Documented theater-history sources identify it as a later addition written for the 2004 Paper Mill Playhouse revision.

Who sings "The End of Summer"?

In revised score listings, it is sung by Lizzie, Arlene, and Pam.

Where does the song appear in the show?

It appears in Act Two after "Easier to Love" and before "Two People in Love" in revised versions of the score.

What is the song about?

It is about transition, grief, and changing expectations, filtered through three women living very different versions of motherhood and loss.

Why was this song added later?

The revision history suggests it was created to deepen emotional continuity after Arlene's miscarriage and to give the women a collective reflective scene.

Does the song exist on the 1984 original cast album?

No reliable source places it on the original Broadway commercial recording.

Is there a definitive commercial recording?

No widely documented official commercial recording surfaced in the strongest available sources. The song is better documented in score histories and production listings than in album circulation.

Does the title have symbolic meaning?

Yes. The season stands for the end of a simpler phase of life and the arrival of harder emotional weather.

Does the song change Baby's tone?

Yes. It gives the revised show a more reflective pause and lets the women share emotional space in a way the original Broadway structure did not.

Was the song a chart hit or award winner on its own?

No individual chart history, certification, or stand-alone award recognition was found for the number.

Awards and Chart Positions

"The End of Summer" has no documented pop chart history or individual commercial awards, which makes sense given its revision-era stage life. The broader context is Baby itself. The original Broadway production received seven Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. That recognition belongs to the show rather than this later-added number, but it still places the song inside a respected theatrical score.

Additional Info

• The song's revision history is its most interesting fact: it was written for Paper Mill Playhouse in 2004 rather than inherited directly from the 1983 Broadway opening-night score.
• Later production databases and licensing-era song lists place it firmly in Act Two as a trio for Lizzie, Arlene, and Pam.
• According to Music Theatre International's revised synopsis, the surrounding plot includes Arlene's miscarriage, Lizzie's hospital visit, and the movement toward Danny and Lizzie's reunion, which makes the song feel like an emotional bridge rather than a side path.
• No reliable evidence surfaced for a major film adaptation use, television sync, alternate-language version, certification, or mainstream cover tradition.

Key Contributors

Sources

Data verified via Music Theatre International synopsis pages, Ovrtur score-history listings, production databases, and theater reference pages tracking the revised song order and Paper Mill Playhouse additions.