A Hanukkah Song with Universal Appeal–“We Are Lights”

haim charbit, Pixabay

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.

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