I started out this post with what I assumed would be an easy-to-answer question: Why did Stephen Schwartz end up collaborating with someone named Steve Young for this song, writing the music but having Young write the lyrics? Schwartz is somewhat of a Broadway legend, having had at one point three hit Broadway shows running at once (Pippin, Godspell, and The Magic Show). In 2003 Schwartz wrote the music and lyrics for the musical Wicked, which just celebrated its 20th year on Broadway. Yes, 20. So there was no shortage of material about Schwartz, but I couldn’t find anything about his writing this specific song. And I became somewhat obsessed with finding out who this Steve Young was. While I don’t typically share my research process, such as it is, about these posts, this one seemed interesting enough to include here. First I googled “Steve Young” and came up with a Wikipedia entry about someone of that name who was very famous for something called the “outlaw movement” in country music. Hmmm. That didn’t sound too promising. After a delightful e-mail exchange with Young’s son, Jubal Lee* (Young died in 2016), we concluded that I had the wrong Steve Young. Jubal said that he was sure his dad wouldn’t have been able to keep quiet about working with the creator of Wicked and therefore miss out on a chance to impress his granddaughter.
But Jubal suggested another possibility, a Stephen W. Young who sometimes calls himself “Steve Young” on his albums of inspirational music. So I tried reaching out to this Steve Young but got no reply. I was about to give up but decided to make one more attempt, this time putting something like “Why did Stephen Schwartz have Steve Young write the lyrics to ‘We Are Lights’?” into good old Google. Bingo. There is indeed a Steve Young who’s based in New York City and does all sorts of speaking and musical gigs, and his website says “We Are Lights” is “a song that Steve co-wrote with Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell, Pippin, etc.) [which] was recorded by Kristin Chenoweth for her new 2021 holiday album — and she performed it in concert at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House!” So I reached out to this Steve Young to find out how this all came about, and he responded in less than 24 hours.
It turns out that the story behind this song relies on a series of connections, as so many creative endeavors do. Young had written an animated Christmas special in the late 90’s based on a children’s book, “Olive the Other Reindeer,” which included lyrics to several original songs. The video is available on YouTube, and some pretty heavy hitters were involved in it, in particular Matt Groening of The Simpsons fame, who is listed as executive producer, and Drew Barrymore, who voiced Olive. I’ll let Young take up the story himself, quoting from his e-mail:
A friend I knew from the synagogue I belonged to at the time, Judith Clurman, is very plugged into the New York choral music and concert scene, and she heard my lyrics and asked me “would you consider trying a lyric for a Hanukkah song? There are relatively few good Hanukkah songs out there.” So I wrote the “We Are Lights” lyrics, and she was pleased enough by my effort to say “I’m going to work some connections and get these to Stephen Schwartz and see if he’d be interested in doing music for this piece.” It all worked out, Stephen Schwartz liked the lyric and wrote the music. We talked on the phone about a few details, and met up once socially. The song premiered at the 2001 Lincoln Center tree lighting with Judith conducting the choir. Since then it’s popped up occasionally with a new recording or bit of prominence, but it remains an outlier in my professional life since I’m mostly in comedy. But, as a friend of mine once said, “Comedy writers are the most serious people.”
Isn’t that a cool story? I love that line about the seriousness of comedy writers.
One of the recordings on which the song “popped up,” as Young says, was a holiday CD titled “Broadway’s Greatest Gifts: Carols for the Cure,” Vol. 7, produced in 2005 and sung by the cast of Wicked. We are told that “It’s now become a holiday tradition to have new recordings of seasonal songs by the current casts and musicians of Broadway shows, with their participation in the CDs that raise funds for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Called Broadway’s Greatest Gifts: Carols for a Cure, the albums have a mix of the traditional and the theatrical, with some spectacular singing.” (“Sound Advice: Curtain Up on Christmas”
Here are the lyrics:
WE ARE LIGHTS
Music composed by Stephen Schwartz
Lyrics by Steve Young
A lamp that kept on burning
A miracle, they say
But the world has kept on turning
Are there miracles, today?
Everyone who lights the candles
Has a bit of ancient spark
We are miracles, lighting up the dark
We are lights, lights of memory
Remembering times long gone
We are glowing, growing miracles
We are lights, we are lights
We are lights shining on and on
A row of burning candles
Shines light upon your face
Linking you and me and all of us
To a far off holy place
But the blazing of the candles
Is not the only light
Look at all of us shining here tonight
We are lights, lights of memory
Remembering times long gone
We are glowing, growing miracles
We are lights, we are lights
We are lights shining on and on
We are lights, lights of memory
Remembering times long gone
We are glowing, growing miracles
We are lights, we are lights
We are lights shining on
We are lights shining on
We are lights
Shining on and on
Lyrics accessed at https://lyricstranslate.com
The words make a compelling case for seeing this ancient holiday in light of today’s world. In fact, if you read the text carefully, you’ll see that the candles of the past have been transformed into the people themselves in the present: “But the blazing of the candles/Is not the only light/Look at all of us shining here tonight.” The original story of Hanukkah is referred to, certainly, as something that should be remembered from “times long gone,” but no specific details are included. It was “a miracle, they say,” an “ancient spark,” that occurred in a “far-off holy place.” I’m not going to reiterate the whole backstory of the holiday here, but if you’re interested in the specific details about this event you can read two earlier posts on this site that cover that ground:
and
“Why Are Latkes—Fried Potato Pancakes—Especially Tied to Hanukkah?”
As I researched this song and looked up various performances on YouTube, I ran into this quotation that was used onscreen during the introduction for one such video, from the 20th-century American rabbi and scholar Moshe Davis:
“A candle is a small thing. But one candle can light another. And see how its own light increases, as a candle gives its flame to the other. You are such a light.”
And then I ran across this thought from a Jewish philanthropy website, which emphasizes an idea I hadn’t considered before: it’s not just the oil that’s a miracle, but the menorah itself. Picture it being pulled from the rubble of the Temple:
On a “p’shat” (simple/direct) level, we celebrate the flask of oil which lit a Menorah salvaged from destruction for eight miraculous nights. Yet, the power of Chanukah runs deeper as we honor the Maccabee family and their crew who drew inordinate Tapas-energy2 to protect their Jewish practices and freedom from the merciless grips of religious persecution. (“Igniting a Flame for Practice during the Pandemic”)
Such a great image: We’re always having to pull treasures out of the mess and keep on lighting the candles. As I write this post in October 2023 the world looks very dark—but then, it always does. Russell Moore, a Christian theologian and writer, had this to say just a few days ago:
Every era is filled with peril. There’s a good reason one of the most quoted lines from all of Frederick Buechner’s writing is still this: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” (Moore to the Point: How to Get Through 2024)
There have been several choral arrangements of this song, with a particularly lovely version by Ryan Nowlin. Excuse me—that would be Major Ryan J. Nowlin, staff arranger and composer with The President’s Own Marine Band. Here I was, about to wrap up this post with a few lines about the arranger, and I found out more than I had bargained for. Since I’m already well over my self-imposed word limit, I’ll just link to an article about him and then post an interview video that I stumbled across in which he discusses a piece he wrote in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, using a text that’s in some ways very similar to that of “We Are Lights.”
But first, here’s Nowlin’s arrangement, recorded by the official sheet music distributor Hal Leonard. My preference for these posted videos is always to use a live performance, but there wasn’t anything satisfactory on YouTube that I could see. Nowlin’s arrangement is notable for its “expanded and elegant piano accompaniment” and has the added benefit of requiring no soloists:
Here’s the performance from that 2005 Broadway Carols for a Cure Album:
And, because I’m a committed Chenowith championer, here’s that performance noted on Young’s website:
Here’s the interview with Major Nowlin about his 9/11 piece:
Here’s the piece itself:
And here are the lyrics:
Inspired by the poem “There Are Stars” by Hannah Senesh/Translation by Bruce L. Ruben
Recorded at Washington National Cathedral.
There are stars whose light reaches the earth only after they themselves are no more.
There are people whose radiant memory shines in the world even after they themselves have left it.
These lights – which shine in the darkest night – These, these illumine the path for us all.
If you would rather read about Major Nowlin, here’s the article I mentioned: “These Lights, Which Shine: A 9/11 20th Anniversary Tribute”
NOTES:
1I can’t resist pointing out that Jubal is a name from the Jewish Bible, the book of Genesis: he was “the first musician—the inventor of the harp and flute.” (Genesis 4:21, The Living Bible.) And if you add the “Lee,” you get something that sounds very much like “jubilee,” yet another concept from the Hebrew Bible, every 50th year as counted from the year of the Exodus, in which all debts were to be cancelled, all land returned to its original owner, and all slaves freed.
2from that same article: “Tapas is a concept in yoga that points to the inner flame in each of us which inspires dedication to our practices; the discipline that fires us to pursue our goals and dreams regardless of the obstacles we face.”
I can’t resist, here at the very end, including the video about Olive:
© Debi Simons
