Shy, the book of memoirs by the late Mary Rodgers, daughter of composer Richard Rodgers,
is being celebrated for dishing the dirt on everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim. It's a very opinionated book.

I was stopped in my tracks by the opinion that Mary Rodgers volunteers
about the song "Sing for your Supper".
Here she is:

"Sing for your Supper" is a 1938 Rodgers and Hart song from The Boys from Syracuse, full of bird images that double as filthy double-entendres: "So, little swallow, swallow now."
-- page 213, chapter "Fair Game", Shy.


On the previous page, the author writes of waking up to this realization:
"... she doesn't have to have sex with someone just because they buy her a meal."

As to the context in The Boys from Syracuse, here is what the website
rodgersandhammerstein.com ventures to say:
"In this swinging trio from The Boys from Syracuse,
three neglected wives commiserate about the sweet song they must sing to keep their marriages afloat."

These subtleties were lost on me when I saw a fully staged production of The Boys from Syracuse years ago.
The show has some good tunes in it, not just this one but also
"Falling in Love with Love."