"Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" is a ballad composed by Cole Porter, who wrote both the music and lyrics, for the 1944 Broadway revue The Seven Lively Arts. The show, produced by Billy Rose at the Ziegfeld Theater, featured an ambitious artistic roster including ballet music by Igor Stravinsky and scenery by Salvador Dali, but was commercially unsuccessful. This song was the only composition from the production to achieve lasting recognition. Porter's melody opens with a striking compositional device: the title phrase is repeated eight times on a single note, the third of the tonic chord, creating an incantatory quality before the melody gradually expands outward through chord tones and chromatic passing notes. The song's most celebrated moment is its shift from major to minor harmony at the lyric "from major to minor," a rare instance of metanarration in popular song where the words explicitly describe what is happening in the music. This transition, moving from a major seventh chord to a minor sixth, underscores the emotional weight of parting. The lyrics demonstrate Porter's characteristic craft with inner rhymes and rhyme chains, capturing the melancholy of wartime separations that resonated deeply with 1944 audiences. The earliest known recording was made in January 1945 by Teddy Wilson's quintet with vocalist Maxine Sullivan, and the song quickly entered the jazz repertoire, where it has remained a widely performed and recorded standard.
