Honorable mentions: “Say No to This,” “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?” My original plan was to write this entry from Hamilton about “Say No to This.” Look, I even got this much of it done: Long version: Okay, so everyone knows that scene near the end of The Shawshank Redemption where Andy has just… Read More Songs from Musicals: #24, “Burn,” from Hamilton
Honorable mentions: “Tevye’s Dream,” “Tradition” The bottle dance from Fiddler on the Roof is about as Jewish as eating Chinese food on Christmas, which is to say there’s nothing inherently Jewish about it, but if you watch enough late 20th Century media on the topic, you’d certainly think it was. It hurts a little not… Read More Songs from Musicals: #25, “Bottle Dance,” from Fiddler on the Roof
Honorable mentions: “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream,” “I Believe” Do you guys remember when The Book of Mormon was changing Broadway? And then Hamilton came along and everything changed? Gosh, we were not prepared. Speaking of Hamilton, Andrew Rannells came on Broadway for a couple months to fill in for Jonathan Groff as King George in… Read More Songs from Musicals: #26 “All-American Prophet,” from The Book of Mormon
Honorable mentions: “Tower of Babble,” “Bless the Lord” Unless I discover that Boublil and Schonberg stole a theme from “Mars, the Bringer of War” or something, I’m willing to bet that this is the highest-rated song with roots in Gustav Holst. Virtually every sung lyric in this song is originally found in the lyrics by… Read More Songs from Musicals: #27, “Turn Back, O Man,” from Godspell
Honorable mentions: “Many a New Day,” “It’s a Scandal! It’s an Outrage!” There’s a 12-step program out there for people who are addicted to male solos from musicals, and I don’t know where it is yet, but I’m starting to worry that I need to find it and join it. It’s hard not to feel… Read More Songs from Musicals: #28, “Lonely Room,” from Oklahoma!
Honorable mentions: “No One Is Alone,” “Giants in the Sky” The farther away from my English degree I get, and the longer I spend teaching English, the more I find myself thinking about genre. This is one of my great weaknesses, a reason why I don’t intend to go back to school for an English… Read More Songs from Musicals: #29, “Children Will Listen,” from Into the Woods
Honorable mentions: “There Are Worse Things I Could Do,” “Mooning” Grease is, for a musical with only three important characters, maybe a little crowded with looks to Frenchie or Kenickie or Doody. What matters most in Grease are the presumed tough guy who ain’t really so tough, the nice girl who lives to preserve his… Read More Songs from Musicals: #30, “Those Magic Changes,” from Grease
Honorable mentions: “Il Mondo Era Vuoto,” “The Light in the Piazza” If I were a braver man, I would have picked one of the several songs in Italian from this show, but that might have been almost prohibitively difficult to work with. There will not be a sequel to this series about opera, that’s for… Read More Songs from Musicals: #31, “Say It Somehow,” from The Light in the Piazza
Honorable mentions: “Something Good,” “Edelweiss” The Sound of Music, your mother’s and my mother’s favorite musical. I think as soon as a woman with kids turns forty – maybe even thirty-five – she gravitates inexorably towards the Julie Andrews film, which won Best Picture a year after #33, four years after #43, and seven years… Read More Songs from Musicals: #32, “The Sound of Music,” from “The Sound of Music”
Honorable mentions: “The Rain in Spain,” “With a Little Bit of Luck” Times have changed, as we mentioned a few posts back, and one of the changes that I find most curious in our expectations for films is that everyone should be able to do everything for the parts they play. Remember when it came out that… Read More Songs from Musicals: #33, “On the Street Where You Live,” from My Fair Lady
Seeing Things Secondhand 