Whether he’s playing Michael Corleone in The Godfather or Frank Serpico in the New York Police Department, Al Pacino’s characters often challenge the system – and his favourite song is likely not what you would expect either.
It’s ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’, a showtune from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 musical South Pacific, which is based on James A. Michener’s wartime stories and set on a remote island during World War II.
“It was a crucial time in our country’s history when the racial tension in the south was raging and the play (‘South Pacific’) was a direct reference to it” he told NME in 2009.
The musical followed a romance between a U.S. Navy nurse and a French plantation owner, but beneath the tropical setting and love story was a sharp commentary on racism and prejudice, and considered quite daring for its time.
That message comes through strongest in ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’, a short but powerful solo that calls out how racism is learned, not innate: “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear / You’ve got to be taught from year to year.”
At the time, some Southern lawmakers called the song “un-American”, which led to it being banned in Georgia.
One state legislator accused it of spreading “philosophy inspired by Moscow”, and another said its support of interracial relationships was a “threat to the American way of life.”
Even when faced with such backlash, creators Rodgers and Hammerstein refused to take it out of the musical. They kept the song in, and it sparked one of the first real moments of political confrontation in American musical theatre.
Pacino admired the song for its subject, and chose it as his favourite when asked by the music magazine on their ‘Inspired by Music’ artist favourites roundup: “I thought it had a real passion in it and a relevance to the times we were living in.”
Since its release, ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’ has been covered by artists as big as Michael Jackson – on his 1973 debut album There Is a Breeze -, Barbra Streisand – on her Live in Concert 2006 album -, Billy Porter – on his 2017 album The Soul of Richard Rodgers – and James Taylor – on his 2020 album American Standard.