Isn't It Romantic?

"Isn't It Romantic?" is a popular song and part of the Great American Songbook. The music was composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart. It has a 32-bar chorus in A–B–A–C form. Alec Wilder, in his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900–1950, calls it "a perfect song."It was introduced by Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in the Paramount film Love Me Tonight (1932). It has since been recorded numerous times, with and without vocals, by many jazz and popular artists. It has also since been featured in a number of other movies. In Love Me Tonight, the song is used in a sequence in which it is first sung by Maurice Chevalier, a tailor, and then taken up by others (his customer, a cabby, a composer, a troop of soldiers, a band of gypsies) and is finally heard and sung by a princess, played by Jeanette MacDonald. The lyrics in the film are not the same as those in the published version. In 2004 this version finished at #73 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. The title is often used in headlines in The New York Times, such as "The Recession. Isn't It Romantic?", "Italy: Isn't It Romantic?", and "In Madrid, Isn't It Romantic?".