Heatherlea Gelineau sings "OVER THE RAINBOW" @ Hard Hat Cafe II

The Oscar-winning song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was nearly pulled by MGM for being too slow for the film. The song takes the now-standard format of a Broadway "I Want" song that establishes a character's motivations and desires in a way that touches the audience, thanks to composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. Harburg. According to their biography by Walter Frisch, the beats of the song have sentimental meaning to the duo:

An Arlen trademark is to begin a song with an octave leap, as in the opening syllables’ ‘Some-WHERE.’ The section ‘Someday I’ll wish upon a star’ was meant to imitate a child’s piano exercise, Arlen claimed. Harburg recalled that it was the way Arlen whistled to call his dog. When Harburg and Arlen were stuck on an ending for the song, Ira Gershwin stepped in to help. When asked why he suggested ending the song with the question, ‘Why, oh, why can’t I,’ Gershwin later recalled, ‘Well, it was getting to be a long evening.’

Another note of music that was famously cut was a jazzy song called "The Jitterbug." When the four friendly travelers make their way through the cursed forest, they see what the Wicked Witch calls “a little insect” in the final cut. The little insect is the jitterbug, which sends the group into a dance where they can not get the jitters out. The jazz sequence was cut from the film but can still be viewed on YouTube or various biographical websites. Taken out of context, it's actually a bit disturbing.