Licentious Harmony and Counterpoint in Porter’s “Love for Sale”

No one would mistake Cole Porter's “Love for Sale” for a love song. Yet this less-than-subtle song about the world's oldest profession, from the 1930 musical The New Yorkers, confronts the nature of love and, by extension, the love song genre. Because of its daring text, it not only was banned in Boston but was considered so risqué that at the time radio stations across America refused to play it. Porter's musical setting of his infamous lyrics also deviated from the normative structures found in contemporaneous popular—and especially love—songs, and his structural departures were not simply motivated by relatively obvious concerns for text painting. This chapter attempts to unpack and understand these musical anomalies through close analyses of harmony, counterpoint, and text.