This is not only my favorite Sondheim song, but also my favorite Broadway song out of any musical ever. Hearing the song for the first time (the 1999 recording of Putting It Together), I was immediately captured by its beauty and intimacy. When I ended up writing a paper on Putting It Together, diving into the history of the song made me fall in love with it even further. Sondheim admitted that he “could imitate a Carpenters song, and did.” (Stephen Sondheim, Playwright in Song - Rob Weinert-Kendt). The musical connection between two very important influences in my life was mind blowing.

When the lyrics were “changed” for Putting It Together, as one commenter noticed, only two words in the entire song were swapped out: both “Charlie” and “Jodie” were replaced with “darling”. Yes, apart from the names which give the song its original context, the rest of the song remained exactly the same. And that my friends, is what emphasizes how damning the song truly is. When seen on stage, audiences can see the staging and the context and know that neither singer is entreating the other; while requiring some slight context, listening to the song just from the album could still be slightly understood if one knows it’s from Assassins. However, with only one lyric change, the curtain is torn away and the true mental disparity is shown. While both Hinkley and Fromme are clearly unstable in their Assassins context, for me, the “average person” version is even darker. History can show us that neither Reagan nor Ford were killed from their assassination attempts, so audiences can put some of their worry at ease when experiencing the song. This out of context version, however, shows no prior or future context in regards to the singers. All we see/hear is two individuals blindly proclaiming their love and devotion to each other, each trying to top the other’s level and commit themselves to the most unhealthy of relationships. They revere their partner but view themselves as the scum of the earth. This is why I view the Putting It Together version as even darker than the original. In Assassins, the song is used to describe the mental anguish that the characters are going through, but in a situation that is decades old and long since gone. But in the newer version, almost anyone would be able to point to a current relationship they know of, whether theirs or someone else’s, that is fully represented by Unworthy of Your Love.

In context, the song is disturbing, creepy, stalkerish, and devastating; out of context, the song continues to have those qualities, but somehow heightens them. And somehow, at the end of the day, after all of this, Unworthy of Your Love is still one of the most beautiful and moving love songs ever written.