Have I Got a Girl for You Lyrics — Company

Song Overview

Stephen Sondheim wrote it, Hal Prince staged the world around it, and a half-dozen sharply drawn couples pop in like cocktails at a Manhattan party: Have I Got a Girl For You is the sly, syncopated set-up number in Company where Robert’s married buddies jockey to play matchmaker. In two and a half whip-smart minutes, the show tips its hand about the tug-of-war at its center - freedom vs. commitment, thrills vs. comfort, fantasy vs. the morning after. I first heard it on the Original Broadway Cast recording, that crisp Columbia Masterworks LP produced by Thomas Z. Shepard, and it has never lost its gleam: brassy, urbane, and just a touch wicked.

Review and Highlights

Quick summary

1. Function in show: A matchmaking scrum where Robert’s married male friends pitch prospective dates, revealing their own ambivalence about matrimony.
2. Creative credits: Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; produced for the cast album by Thomas Z. Shepard; orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.
3. Original recording: Tracked at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in early May 1970 and issued on the Original Broadway Cast album shortly thereafter.
4. Signature features: Jazzy big-band punch, patter-like internal rhymes, and comic reversals that pivot from locker-room bravado to existential doubt.
5. Later versions: Recut across major revivals, including a 2018 London gender-switch where it becomes Have I Got a Guy for You.

Creation History

Sondheim’s score for Company was conceived hand-in-glove with George Furth’s vignettes, aiming for songs that act less like soliloquies and more like character x-rays. Have I Got a Girl For You arrives after a volley of voicemails and invitations, a chorus of friends who seemingly cannot let Robert live a quiet night alone. The recording we know today was crafted in a famously intense marathon session for the original cast album - a session captured in D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary about the making of that LP. Shepard’s production aesthetic favors clarity and immediacy: close-miked ensemble voices, a rhythm section that sits forward in the mix, and Tunick’s brass and reeds voiced for wit over sheer bombast. On record, each husband gets his color: Larry’s louche swagger, Peter’s cosmopolitan name-dropping, then - snap - the ensemble flips from pitching dates to questioning the whole institution they’re supposedly celebrating.

As later revivals shifted emphasis, the number proved elastic. In John Doyle’s 2006 actor-musician revival, the arrangement keeps its quicksilver quips while riding a leaner groove. In 2018’s London reimagining, where Bobbie is a woman, the lyric pivots to Have I Got a Guy for You, exposing the same fault lines in a new social frame. What stays is the setup-and-switch: a sales pitch that dissolves into a chorus of doubts.

Highlights - what to listen for

1. Comedy in counterpoint: The men’s overlapping telephone cadences - “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby” - function as rhythmic hooks and as social pressure, a chorus of helpful meddling that sounds like a dial tone turned into swing.
2. Tunick’s brass punctuation: Short, stabbing figures underline the punchlines, while reeds glue together the patter sections - a radio-era variety-show sparkle with modern bite.
3. Rhyme schemes as character: Sondheim’s internal rhymes - “Sazerac slings” with “fruit and she swings” - sell the men’s carnival-barker patter, then the rhyme density thins when the existential questions roll in.
4. The tonal pivot: That glorious swerve into the “Whaddaya like...” refrain is the kicker - macho matchmaking gives way to melancholy marketing for married life. The music cools, phrase lengths lengthen, and the harmony shades darker without losing the groove.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

Robert - the perpetual birthday boy - becomes the object of unsolicited charity. His married friends, split into husband-wife duos, bombard him with invitations and blind-date pitches. Two comic mini-portraits emerge: Larry’s “dumb” date who likes Sazerac slings, and Peter’s “smart” one who is into exotica like the Kama Sutra. After the hard sell, the tone shifts. The husbands, drunk on nostalgia and performative worldliness, confess envy - the freedom to be Robert, to live unencumbered. Then the refrain: “Whaddaya like... Then whaddaya wanna get married for?” The number ends not with a triumphal plan to couple Robert off, but with a wobble in the marital consensus.

Song Meaning

Have I Got a Girl For You is a bait-and-switch. The first half parodies the marketplace of dating - resumes, traits, kinks, and cocktail trivia - while the second half peeks behind the curtain at the marriages doing the selling. It’s less about the anonymous “girl” and more about the pitchmen. These men perform ease and cosmopolitan taste, but Sondheim’s cadence reveals low-grade panic: clipped quips, caffeinated syllables, then the music takes a breath and the mask slips. The message is not that marriage is bad; it’s that marriage can be a story we tell ourselves, a consumer decision dressed up as destiny, and a social performance that can curdle into salesmanship. The mood walks a tightrope - brash and fizzy on the surface, rueful underneath - perfectly aligned with Company’s concept-musical DNA.

Annotations

“My niece from Ohio.”

A wink to Kathy, one of Robert’s three girlfriends. She never gets a full solo in the show, so Sondheim gives her a sly name-check here - a social dot on Robert’s constellation rather than a star turn. The passing reference deepens the sense that the men are endlessly curating Robert’s life, even its offstage parts.

“Sazerac slings - You give her even the fruit and she swings.”

The Sazerac is a New Orleans staple, usually garnished with a citrus peel. The lyric deliberately nudges toward the sound of “Singapore Sling,” the fruit-forward classic, because the rhyme and the image are funnier that way. The joke is the men’s showy sophistication - brandishing drink lore as if it proves they’re plugged into pleasure.

“The kind of girl you can’t send through the mails!”

Two shadings at once: a nod to Larry’s “dumb” date, a flight attendant, and a jab at the fading American obscenity code that once policed risqué material in the post. It’s Sondheim’s favorite move - stack references so the line hits twice.

“Have I got a chick for you? ... The Kama Sutra and Chinese techniques...”

Peter’s brag is worldly on the surface and faintly insecure at the edges. He’s leaning on exoticized references - a catalog of “mystiques” - to sell his pick to Robert, as though cosmopolitan sampling equals intimacy. The writing satirizes that tendency to confuse novelty with depth.

Style and arrangement

The groove fuses Broadway swing with nightclub punch - think witty brass writing and a rhythm section that sashays more than it stomps. The number is built for comic momentum: rapid patter, bright interjections, then a spacious refrain that lets the subtext breathe. The emotional arc starts at party pitch and settles into a kind of communal sigh.

Cultural touchpoints

It’s 1970 New York - cocktails, self-help fads, and magazine cosmopolitanism. The song riffs on the era’s hangover from 60s liberation: more choices than ever, less certainty than before. A year later, the show wins Tonys; the culture is renegotiating coupledom in real time. If we jump forward, the 2018 gender-switch version proves the text can flex with social change without losing its sting, because the core question - “whaddaya wanna get married for?” - isn’t gendered so much as it is human.

Key Facts

• Artist: Original Broadway Cast of Company - featured voices include Charles Braswell, John Cunningham, Steve Elmore, George Coe, Charles Kimbrough
• Featured: Ensemble husbands in the scene: Larry, Peter, Paul, David, Harry
• Composer: Stephen Sondheim
• Producer: Thomas Z. Shepard
• Release Date: May 13, 1970
• Genre: Broadway - concept musical; pop-jazz inflections
• Instruments: Orchestra with brass-reed emphasis, rhythm section; original Broadway pit under Harold Hastings
• Label: Columbia Masterworks
• Mood: Spry, urbane, then reflective
• Length: Approx. 2:30 on most cast recordings
• Track #: Typically 6 on the 1970 LP sequence
• Language: English (notable Portuguese version: “Eu Tenho Uma Para Voce” on Brazilian cast)
• Album: Company (Original Broadway Cast)
• Music style: Swing-inflected show tune with patter passages
• Poetic meter: Mixed meter with patter prose, conversational scansion

Canonical Entities & Relations

• Stephen Sondheim - wrote music and lyrics for Company.
• George Furth - wrote the book; vignettes frame where this number lands.
• Thomas Z. Shepard - produced the original cast album for Columbia Masterworks.
• Jonathan Tunick - orchestrated the score heard on the LP.
• Harold Hastings - musical director and conductor for the Broadway pit and recording session.
• Hal Prince - produced and directed the original Broadway production.
• Original Broadway ensemble - Charles Braswell (Larry), John Cunningham (Peter), Steve Elmore (Paul), George Coe (David), Charles Kimbrough (Harry) - sing the husbands’ parts on the album.
• D. A. Pennebaker - filmed the recording session for the documentary Original Cast Album: Company.
• 2018 London company - Marianne Elliott directed, with gender-swapped Bobbie; the number becomes Have I Got a Guy for You.
• Brazilian company - Claudio Botelho and Charles Moeller led a landmark Portuguese-language staging; the number appears as “Eu Tenho Uma Para Voce”.

Questions and Answers

Who produced the recording of this track on the original cast album?

Thomas Z. Shepard produced the Original Broadway Cast album for Columbia Masterworks.

When was the original LP released?

May 13, 1970 - only a couple of weeks after the Broadway opening.

Who wrote the song?

Stephen Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics.

Where does the number sit in the show’s first act?

Shortly after “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” and before Robert’s introspective “Someone Is Waiting.”

What is the dramatic function of the piece?

It exposes the married men’s vicarious living through Robert and cracks their glossy veneer, moving the show from comic bustle to uneasy self-interrogation.

Are there notable alternate-language versions?

Yes - a Brazilian cast recording includes “Eu Tenho Uma Para Voce,” the Portuguese adaptation of the number.

How did the 2018 London revival alter the number?

With Bobbie as a woman, the lyric flips to Have I Got a Guy for You; the dynamic still pokes at marriage-market logic, just from a fresh angle.

Does the song appear in filmed versions?

It is included in the 2011 New York Philharmonic concert film of Company, among other revivals captured for audio or video.

What makes the orchestration distinctive?

Short, witty brass punctuations and reed doublings that give the patter buoyancy while spotlighting punchlines.

Is the number ever recorded with different leads?

Yes - London, Broadway revivals, concert versions, and the gender-switched 2018 cast all feature new principals while preserving the song’s function.

Awards and Chart Positions

While the individual track did not chart as a single, the musical surrounding it became an awards juggernaut. In 1971, Company won the Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book (George Furth), and Best Original Score among others. The original LP’s release helped solidify the score’s reputation; the album later appeared in quadraphonic editions and has been reissued multiple times on CD and digital platforms. As stated in the Tony Awards records, the show set a then-record for nominations in 1971. According to Playbill’s archival features, the original Broadway run opened April 26, 1970 and crossed the 700-performance mark - a strong indicator of the album’s long tail with audiences.

Additional Info

Recording day lore: Pennebaker’s documentary on the making of the album immortalizes that marathon at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio - a cavernous church turned studio, sometimes nicknamed “The Church.” It is a rare window into how cast albums are built: take after take for ensemble balance, punch-ins for tricky lines, producer and composer parsing musical micro-gestures. According to the New Yorker’s write-up when the film hit the Criterion Channel, the footage around “The Ladies Who Lunch” is the most famous, but those earlier ensemble sequences show how numbers like Have I Got a Girl For You attained their on-disc snap.

London and back again: In the early 1970s, the London transfer got a rare hybrid cast album - a curious artifact where Larry Kert’s Robert replaced Dean Jones’ vocals on top of the New York tracks. That oddity tells you how feverishly cast albums circulated then; producers knew the record was the show’s ambassador. And when the 2018 London revival landed, its recording put Have I Got a Guy for You in the canon, proof that the song’s skeleton - the spin, the pivot, the doubt - holds in any pronoun set.

International echoes: The Brazilian production at the start of the 2000s marked an early major Portuguese-language staging of Sondheim’s work. Hearing “Eu Tenho Uma Para Voce” in that context reframes the New York cocktail chatter into Rio and Sao Paulo idioms - different skyline, same human static. That adaptation lineage matters: it shows how the song’s satire of social matchmaking makes sense wherever couples are a public sport.

Covers and revivals you can hear now: From the Doyle 2006 Broadway revival to the gender-switched 2018 cast, multiple official recordings preserve the number’s bite. The 2011 New York Philharmonic concert film is a fan favorite - an orchestra the size of a mid-century pit band brings out Tunick’s voicings, and the comic timing lands with cinematic clarity.

Sources: Masterworks Broadway; Tony Awards - American Theatre Wing; Internet Broadway Database; Sondheim Guide; Playbill; Discogs; Spotify; London Theatre news and features; The Guardian; The New Yorker; Overtur.