Cool (West Side Story song) The Goodfeathers. The song is also parodied in the Flight of the Conchords episode The Tough Brets with the song "Stay Cool, Bret". The "Castle" episode "Cool Boys" has Richard Castle and Detective Slaughter sing it to distract some criminals hold them at gunpoint. British sketch show Horrible Histories parodied this song as a song about the English Civil War. Cool (West Side Story song) "Cool" is a song from the musical "West Side Story". Leonard Bernstein composed the music and Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics. This song is known for its fugal treatment of a jazz figure, described by
Stephen Sondheim not lend itself to musicalization, they began writing the musical version. The project had many problems, Rodgers' alcoholism among them; Sondheim, calling it the one project he regretted, then decided to work only when he could write both music and lyrics. He asked author and playwright James Goldman to join him as bookwriter for a new musical. Inspired by a "New York Times" article about a gathering of former Ziegfeld Follies showgirls, it was entitled "The Girl Upstairs" (and would later become "Follies"). In 1966, Sondheim semi-anonymously provided lyrics for "The Boy From...," a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema"