I Get a Kick Out of You (song)

"I Get a Kick out of You" is a song by Cole Porter, originally featured in the Broadway musical Anything Goes and the movie of the same name.

Cover versions
Originally sung by Ethel Merman, it has been covered by performers including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Patti LuPone, Sutton Foster, Marlene Dietrich, Cesare Siepi, Dinah Washington, Bobby Short, Louis Armstrong, Erroll Garner, Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Mary Martin, Anita O'Day, Rosemary Clooney, Margaret Whiting, Django Reinhardt, Royce Campbell, Gary Shearston, Jamie Cullum, The Living End, Dolly Parton, Joan Morris, Max Roach, Shirley Bassey, Rod Stewart, Bryan Ferry, The Gutter Twins, Lisa Ekdahl, Patricia Barber, Dwele, Nana Mouskouri and Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr., as well as being quoted by MF DOOM. Elaine Paige also made a cover in 1989.

Alterations to the song
The lyrics were first altered shortly after being written. The last verse originally went as follows:
 * I get no kick in a plane
 * I shouldn't care for those nights in the air
 * That the fair Mrs. Lindbergh goes through
 * But I get a kick out of you.

After the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping, Porter changed the second and third lines to:
 * Flying too high with some guy in the sky
 * Is my idea of nothing to do

In the 1936 movie version, alternative lyrics in the second verse were provided to replace a reference to the drug cocaine, which was not allowed by Hollywood's Production Code of 1934.

The original verse goes as follows:
 * Some get a kick from cocaine
 * I'm sure that if
 * I took even one sniff
 * That would bore me terrifically, too
 * Yet, I get a kick out of you

Porter changed the first line to:
 * Some like the perfume in Spain

Sinatra recorded both pre-Code and post-Code versions: the first in 1953 and the second in 1962. On a recording live in Paris in 1962, Sinatra sings the altered version with the first line as Some like the perfume from Spain. Other Porter-approved substitutions include "whiff of Guerlain." There is also a version with Some like the bop-type refrain on Sinatra and Swingin' Brass

All three of the above alternatives are mentioned in the liner notes to Joan Morris and William Bolcom's CD, Night and Day; on the recording, Morris sings the original second verse.

References in popular culture
The popular children's television show "Sesame Street" once did a parody of this song about the letter U performed by Ethel Mermaid, a fishy spoof of Ethel Merman. In the song, Ethel sings about how none of the other letters in the alphabet give her more joy than the letter U, backed up by a school of fish. A shark gets too close to her while she sings and is continuously smacked away by her tail.

The 1974 film Blazing Saddles features the song (called, "I Get No Kick from Champagne") led by Bart (Cleavon Little) and his fellow railroad workers at the request of Lyle (Burton Gilliam) for a work song, but Lyle interrupts and suggests that "Camptown Races" is a better work song.