Prologue: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats Lyrics – Cats

Song Overview

“Prologue: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats (1982 Original Broadway Cast)” opens the gate to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s alley of moonlit mischief. The Original Broadway Cast of Cats - with featured voices like Harry Groener and the dancer-electricity of Reed Jones - sings an invitation, a roll call, a riddle. This is the song that teaches you the tribe’s name and tests whether you belong. Released on the Broadway cast album in 1983 by Geffen, it runs 5:17 on that recording and sets the show’s ritual tone in one breath.

Personal Review

If you’re looking up the song title or its lyrics, you’re probably chasing that quicksilver feeling the number gives off - a street pageant of names and boasts, a chorus that turns language into percussion. In one line: it’s a nocturnal roll call where the tribe defines itself by what it can do, will do, and simply must do.

Song Meaning and Annotations

I’ve heard this opener in packed theatres and in quiet apartments at 2 a.m., and each time it does the same trick - it builds a world by asking questions. “Are you blind when you’re born?” “Can you see in the dark?” The call-and-response structure is schoolyard-simple, ritual-serious. The style is show tune fused with chant: bright pit-orchestra pulses, handclap energy, and a vocabulary of tumbling rhymes that behave like drum hits.

The emotional arc starts teasing, turns competitive, lands communal. In a few minutes, the tribe sketches its myth: if you can flip off walls, sing at “astronomical height”, and keep your balance on a wire, you’re in. That refrain - “Jellicles can and Jellicles do” - is the thesis. It’s not modest. It’s not meant to be. It’s a manifesto sung in paw-prints.

Creation-wise, the number springs from T. S. Eliot’s Practical Cats poems, fitted to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s melody engine, with additional text-shaping by Trevor Nunn and Richard Stilgoe on this track. On the 1982 Broadway recording, it’s track 2 and clocks in at 5:17.

Culturally, “Jellicle” is Eliot’s playful coinage. Most scholars trace it to “dear little cats” said quickly - a family in-joke turned tribe name. You’ll see the etymology echoed in reference sources and critical glosses.

Those opening questions aren’t just cute. Newborn kittens are born with eyes closed and take days to open them, so “Are you blind when you’re born?” has fur-and-blood truth. And “Can you see in the dark?” nods to real feline vision - larger corneas and pupils help cats thrive in low light, though not total darkness.

Then there’s the show’s gleaming metaphysics: “Do you know how to go to the Heaviside Layer?” Eliot borrowed a scientific term for a real ionospheric stratum that reflects radio waves, then let it shimmer as afterlife imagery. The musical treats it as ascension and renewal - a place beyond the junkyard where one cat gets another life.

Production and instrumentation details matter here. Cats pairs synth shimmer with brassy punches and woodwind flickers - an orchestra that can purr or pounce. Broadway productions typically deploy a compact pit with multiple keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and a small winds-brass battery. On some recordings the orchestra is credited under a conductor such as Rene Wiegert.

Pop culture keeps circling this prologue. The 1998 filmed production opens its world with the same mantra. The 2019 feature film soundtrack places “Prologue: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats” as track 2 at 4:49, trimmed and tweaked for cinema. Even TV’s BoJack Horseman looped the refrain as on-hold music for Princess Carolyn - a wink that says the tune’s earworm status is settled.

“Can you see in the dark?”

Annotation: Cats manage with a fraction of the light we need - courtesy of those big pupils and a reflective tapetum - but pitch black still defeats them.

“Were you there when the pharaohs commissioned the Sphinx?”

Annotation: The lyric’s time-hopping brag turns the Jellicle into a myth tourist - equal parts tall tale and street swagger. No proof required; that’s the fun.

“Do you know how to go to the Heaviside Layer?”

Annotation: In Cats, the science term becomes the cat-heaven doorway. Ritual meets radio physics.

Verse Highlights

Verse 1

The interrogations stack like jump-rope chants. Rhythm first, facts second. The rhyme pattern clips forward, and the music follows with tight, percussive figures; the tribe probes your senses and your nerve.

Chorus

“Jellicles can and Jellicles do” flips grammar into a drumline. The phrase repeats until belief arrives - repetition as indoctrination, but also as groove.

Bridge bits

References to Rossini and Strauss aren’t braggy name-drops so much as a style flex. Cats can sing in waltz time, handle oratorio, crack a triumphant “C”. The joke lands because the pit can pivot that fast.

Closing drive

The taxonomy run - practical, dramatical, pragmatical, fanatical - is pure carnival barker. It catalogues personalities like a crate of fireworks, ready to spark later in the show.

Annotations used: blindness at birth; low-light vision; coronation-cat anecdote; “Jellicle” as “dear little”.

Tags: Cats, Broadway, Original Broadway Cast, Jellicle, Lyrics, Andrew Lloyd Webber, T. S. Eliot, Heaviside Layer

Key Facts

• Featured: Harry Groener, Reed Jones (Dancer)
• Producer: Andrew Lloyd Webber; Martin Levan
• Composer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Lyric sources: T. S. Eliot; additional text by Trevor Nunn and Richard Stilgoe
• Release Date: January 26, 1983
• Genre: Show tune, Broadway
• Instruments: Pit orchestra featuring multiple keyboards, guitar, bass, drums/percussion, woodwinds and brass; orchestra conducted on OBCR materials by Rene Wiegert
• Label: Geffen Records (US release)
• Mood: ceremonial, playful, competitive
• Length: 5:17
• Track #: 2
• Language: English
• Album: Cats: Complete Original Broadway Cast Recording (1982 Original Broadway Cast)
• Music style: chant-like choruses, brisk show-band grooves, synth sheen over acoustic ensemble
• Poetic meter: mixed anapestic and trochaic patterns across call-and-response lines
• ©/?: ? 1983 The Really Useful Group Ltd. (territorial licensing to Polydor UK noted on digital issues)

Songs Exploring Themes of Community

“Circle of Life” - The Lion King (1994 film/1997 stage): Another opening ritual, but cast as sunrise majesty instead of alley-magic. The vocals arrive like a procession, and the lyrics stamp a philosophy on the ground: belonging is biological and cosmic. Where the Cats prologue is inquisitive and playful, “Circle of Life” is declarative - a curtain-raising crest that says the rules were here before you. Different colors, same goal: gather the tribe.

“Tradition” - Fiddler on the Roof: Meanwhile, Anatevka builds its community through roles and rules. The melody is sturdy, almost square on purpose, and the lyrics are job titles and obligations. Compared to “Jellicle Songs,” which swaggers and jokes, “Tradition” behaves like a family meeting. Both songs teach their audiences how a place works - one with a wink, the other with a ledger.

“Look Down” - Les Misérables: In contrast, this opener carves community out of hardship. The men sing in chains; the rhythm is hammer-on-stone. It’s not a welcome so much as a warning. Yet the effect is similar to Cats - a world defined in minutes. You learn the code by surviving the beat.

Questions and Answers

What does “Jellicle” mean in this song title?

It’s widely glossed as Eliot’s playful shortening of “dear little cats,” later adopted as the tribe’s name in Cats.

Was “Prologue: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats” released as a single?

No - it appears as track 2 on the 1983 Original Broadway Cast album. The album itself charted and later went Platinum.

Who wrote the lyrics?

T. S. Eliot’s poems supply the text foundation, adapted for this number with additional words by Trevor Nunn and Richard Stilgoe.

What is the Heaviside Layer the cats sing about?

A real ionospheric layer that reflects radio waves, repurposed in the musical as a metaphor for ascension and renewal.

How long is this track on the Broadway album?

5 minutes and 17 seconds on the Cats Complete Original Broadway Cast Recording.

Awards and Chart Positions

The Broadway cast album that includes “Prologue: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats” won the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards, was certified Platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 131 on the Billboard 200, No. 5 in Austria, and No. 17 in New Zealand. The show itself swept the 1983 Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, and more.