I must admit my partiality to Oscar Hammerstein. His lyrics to Bill's Soliloquy in CAROUSEL just can't be topped. This song reveals Bill's character as well as it advances the musical's plot. Also I am sufficient old to know that everybody back in the late forties/early fifties graduated to "You'll Never Walk Alone". Finally, a generation before in SHOWBOAT, Hammerstein and Jerome Kern showed how a song that every bass sang for the next forty years ("Old Man River") could not only function as a showstopper but also as a leitmotif for the rest of the musical.