America (West Side Story song) America (West Side Story song) “America” is a song from the musical "West Side Story". Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics and Leonard Bernstein composed the music. In the original stage version, Anita – the most important female character after Maria and the girlfriend of Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks – praises America while a fellow Puerto Rican immigrant, Rosalia, supports Puerto Rico. This version of the song deprecates the island and highlights the positive qualities of American life ("I’ll drive a Buick through San Juan/If there’s a road you can drive on"). The irony of this supposedly pro-American number,
Stephen Sondheim Nathanael West's "A Cool Million" with James Lapine around 1982. Sondheim worked with William Goldman on "Singing Out Loud", a musical film, in 1992, penning the song "Water Under the Bridge". According to the composer, Goldman wrote one or two drafts of the script and Sondheim wrote six-and-a-half songs when director Rob Reiner lost interest in the project. "Dawn" and "Sand", from the film, were recorded for the albums "Sondheim at the Movies" and "Unsung Sondheim". Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein wrote "The Race to Urga", scheduled for Lincoln Center in 1969, but when Jerome Robbins left the project it was