"Soliloquy" is a 1945 song composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, written for their 1945 musical Carousel, where it was introduced by John Raitt.

The now jobless carousel barker Billy Bigelow, the antihero of the musical, sings this seven-and-a-half minute song just after he has learned he is about to become a father. In it, he happily daydreams over what it would be like to be a father to a boy, but midway through the song, he is horrified and disappointed to realize that it could turn out to be a girl. The song immediately becomes more tender, as he begins to like the idea. At song's end, he considers that a girl needs the very best a father can offer, and decides to get money to provide for her. It is this idea that spurs him on to help his criminal pal Jigger Craigin in committing a robbery, an act which ultimately leads to personal disaster for Billy.

Frank Sinatra had recently become a father when he recorded "Soliloquy" for the first time on May 28, 1946. With the time limitation of about 3:30 on a 10" 78-rpm record his 7:57 long recording was released on Columbia's Masterwork label (the classical division) as two sides of a 12" record.

A soliloquy (from Latin: "talking by oneself") is a device often used in drama whereby a character speaks to himself or herself, relating his or her thoughts and feelings, thereby also sharing them with the audience. Other characters however are not aware of what is being said. A soliloquy is distinct from a monologue or an aside: a monologue is a speech where one character addresses other characters; an aside is a (usually short) comment by one character towards the audience.

Soliloquies were frequently used in dramas but went "out of fashion" when drama shifted towards realism in the late 18th and 19th century.

The plays of William Shakespeare feature many soliloquies, the most famous being the "To be or not to be" speech in Hamlet. In Richard III and Othello, the respective villains use soliloquies to entrap the audience as they do the characters on stage. Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech and Juliet's "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" are other famous examples of Shakespearean soliloquies. (Though Juliet's speech is overheard by Romeo, she believes that she is alone with her thoughts, making her speech a soliloquy.)

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing. A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs. The lyrics (words) of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature, though they may be religious verses or free prose.

A song may be for a solo singer, a duet, trio, or larger ensemble involving more voices. Songs with more than one voice to a part are considered choral works. Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. One division is between "art songs", "pop songs", and "folk songs". Other common methods of classification are by purpose (sacred vs secular), by style (dance, ballad, Lied, etc.), or by time of origin (Renaissance, Contemporary, etc.).

A song is a piece of music for accompanied or unaccompanied voice or voices or, "the act or art of singing," but the term is generally not used for large vocal forms including opera and oratorio. However, the term is, "often found in various figurative and transferred sense (e.g. for the lyrical second subject of a sonata...)." The noun "song" has the same etymological root as the verb "to sing" and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word to mean "that which is sung" or "a musical composition suggestive of song." The OED also defines the word to mean "a poem" or "the musical phrases uttered by some birds, whales, and insects, typically forming a recognizable and repeated sequence and used chiefly for territorial defence or for attracting mates."

Louis Tillett is an Australian singer-songwriter, keyboard player and saxophonist. He was the frontman in Australian bands The Wet Taxis, Paris Green and The Aspersion Caste. He has also worked as a backing musician with Catfish, former The Saints guitarist Ed Kuepper's group The Laughing Clowns, the New Christs and Tex Perkins.

The Wet Taxis, helming from Sydney, first toured Melbourne in February 1984. Hailed as sporting an American garage-style psychedelic sound, they covered bands such as MC5, Moving Sidewalks and Unrelated Segments.

The band were described by Sydney Morning Herald as one "of the most popular bands in the Australia's indie scene" in an article reminiscing over their then record label, the Britain-based Australian independent label Hot Records.

In March 1984, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the release of an acoustic-based three-track single (EP), "Carnival of Souls", by No Dance. Each track was contributed by one of the members of the group: Tillett, Damien Lovelock of The Celibate Rifles and Brett Myers of Died Pretty.

Sir Patrick Stewart, OBE (born 13 July 1940) is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television. He is most widely known for his television and film roles, such as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and its successor films, Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men film series, and as the voice of Avery Bullock in American Dad!.

Stewart was born on 13 July 1940 in Mirfield, near Dewsbury in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He is the son of Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart, a Regimental Sergeant Major in the British Army who served with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and previously worked as a general labourer and as a postman.

In a 2008 interview, Stewart said: "My father was a very potent individual, a very powerful man who got what he wanted. It was said that when he strode onto the parade ground, birds stopped singing. It was many, many years before I realised how my father inserted himself into my work. I've grown a moustache for Macbeth. My father didn't have one, but when I looked in the mirror just before I went on stage I saw my father's face staring straight back at me."