The tune

Some Other Time is Leonard Bernstein’s song with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, written for the 1944 Broadway musical On the Town. It tells of three sailors on 24-hour shore leave in New York who meet three women, knowing they may never see each other again, and hoping to catch up some other time. The number was omitted from the 1949 film version of On the Town. It is a blues-inflected Broadway ballad that has become a jazz standard, prized for its emotional honesty and clever word play. A famous recording is Tony Bennett and Bill Evans from 1975 on The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album, noted for the intimate interplay between Evans’s piano and Bennett’s vocal ending.

What the song is about

The musical follows three sailors on 24-hour shore leave in New York in 1944, during World War II, each of whom meets a woman. In this number, sung by Claire, Hildy, Ozzie and Chip in a subway car after the sailors have missed Gabey, the four characters wonder about their future, knowing the men must soon return to their ship. The number follows the subway ride sequence in Act II.