They All Laughed is a song that is considered a ‘Jazz Standard’, that means that it’s a song that everyone who likes Jazz knows about and most people like. It was written by two brothers named George and Ira Gershwin. Ira wrote the lyrics, he was a lyricist, and George wrote the music.
It’s one of those songs you have to know if you’re going to call yourself a jazz musician. Kind of like all the things you have to learn in 1st grade in order to call yourself a 2nd grader. In fact, what I just did, relating something you know about to something you might not know about to help you understand it is called using simile. That’s something that Ira Gershwin did in the lyrics of this song.
When Ira relates how the couple in the song are still together even though nobody thought they would be, he is using simile to connect it to the stories of the inventors he talks about earlier in the song.
Here’s some more info on those inventors and pioneers:
Milton Hershey and his Hershey Bar
Henry Ford and The Model T (The ‘Tin Lizzie’)
OH! I almost forgot! Here’s a recording of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘They All Laughed’ and the lyrics.