Annie: It’s the Hard Knock Life, From Script to Stage

The producers of ANNIE on Broadway have created this Enrichment Guide for teachers, students, and parents to enhance their experience of seeing the musical. Print it out and enjoy the activities, lesson plans, fun historical facts, and “swell” information about the show!  For Annie's return to Broadway, this documentary offers a memorable behind-the-scenes look at every step of a single ANNIE production number, from the earliest phases of discussion among the creative team, rehearsals with actors, to opening night on Broadway.

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Think you’re an ANNIE expert? Take this quiz to see if you can guess which character says famous (and not-so-famous!) lines in the musical.

ANNIE

Jay-Z tells Terry Gr

["Annie" sample]

It's the hard knock life, for us 

It's the hard knock life, for us!!

Steada treated,we get tricked

Steada kisses, we get kicked

It's the hard knock life, for us 

It's the hard knock life, for us!!

Steada treated , we get tricked

Steada kisses, we get kicked

It's the hard knock life!! Charles Strouse, who wrote the music for the song

HARD KNOCK LIFE (GHETTO ANTHEM) LYRICS - JAY-Z

Jay Z Hard knock life

Jay-Z: The Fresh Air Interview

GROSS: Okay, so provocative is a pretty big word for a kid of that age. You write how you started reading the dictionary, like looking for cool words to use. Did you find that word in the dictionary, or did you already know it?

JAY-Z: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I found that in the dictionary. I had a sixth-grade teacher, Miss Louden, that was very pivotal to my hunger for wanting to know the English language and, you know, discover these words. And, you know, it was a tool in the music that - and the poetry that I chose to pursue.

GROSS: ...you made up that you entered an essay contest and in the essay, you wrote about the importance of seeing "Annie" on Broadway - which you'd never seen on Broadway, in fact.

JAY-Z: Yeah. Right.

GROSS: And, you know, all that it meant to you when you saw it on Broadway, and I think you said you like, won in the essay contest and so you...

JAY-Z: I didn't want you to put the whole thing out there. I was trying to, you know, I could...

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So in other words, you lied a little bit in order to get the rights.

JAY-Z: Yeah, it was, you know, it was a bad lie for a good reason.

(Soundbite of laughter)

JAY-Z: Yeah.

GROSS: Well, it worked out well for everybody.

JAY-Z: Yeah.

GROSS: Have you ever met Charles Strouse, who wrote the music for the song?

JAY-Z: No. But someone just reached out like the other day, and said that he wants to speak with me, so Im going to reach out to him. I mean, just the other day, so - which is really cool. I was in the house trying to - I went looking at a house on the Upper East Side, and I saw this plaque on the wall. And Im like, wait a minute, that's my plaque. And I guess it was his house. This is a couple years back; I have to share that with him.

GROSS: Yeah, OK - I mean, about "Hard Knock Life"? OK. So this is Charles Strouse, who wrote the music for "Annie," talking about Jay-Z's version of "Hard Knock Life." And here's what he had to say about it.

Mr. CHARLES STROUSE (Composer for Broadway, Opera, TV and Film): He said something in the liner notes that it was gritty. He said it was gritty, and he felt that that was the way black people felt in the ghetto. And the fact is, when we were working on "Annie," it was the first song that I had written the music for. And I wanted that song to be gritty. I didn't want it to be a fake. I wanted it to show these desperate times and these maltreated girls, etc., etc. So when he picked up on that I was very proud of myself - for that reason alone.