Honorable mentions: “How I Know You,” “Not Me” Aida hit Broadway in 2000, about four years after Rent did, and they bear surprisingly strong similarities. Both of them want to be socially conscious: Aida is Romeo and Juliet for race (though it could say significantly more about race than it does), while race is just… Read More Songs from Musicals: #16, “Elaborate Lives,” from Aida
Honorable mentions: “Farewell Letter,” “Happiness” No musical begins with so strong a statement of what will come next as Passion. Two handsome people, both youngish and strong, lie in bed together. “I’m so happy I’m afraid I’ll die here in your arms,” the woman sings. “What would you do if I died like this, right… Read More Songs from Musicals: #17, “Garden Sequence,” from Passion
Honorable mentions: “Down Once More/Track Down This Murderer,” “Why Have You Brought Us Here?” Okay, grab a pen or pencil and a piece of scratch paper. You have one minute to write down everything you associate with The Phantom of the Opera. It might be a song, or character, or something from the production end… Read More Songs from Musicals: #18, “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,” from The Phantom of the Opera
Honorable mentions: “Another Day,” “I’ll Cover You (Reprise)” I have so many feelings about Rent, and they are scattered around this blog and in my text messages and on my Facebook, and I’m going to centralize at least a couple of them here. There’s a spectrum, and it’s got “La Vie Boheme” on one end… Read More Songs from Musicals: #19, “What You Own,” from Rent
(This is not really a great video; the last minute and a half of this is not, in fact, “If I Said I Love You.” I thought I’d have this problem at some point, and I’m pleasantly surprised it took this long. Go find it on Spotify.) Honorable mentions: “I’ll Be There,” “Here on this… Read More Songs from Musicals: #20, “If I Said I Love You,” from The Pirate Queen
Honorable mentions: “Too Many Mornings,” “You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love Will See Us Through” I’ve already talked about Follies at some length on this blog, back before I started this little series. Then I was working with “Losing My Mind,” which is one of the key songs from this musical, and which is not unlike “One… Read More Songs from Musicals: #21, “One More Kiss,” from Follies
A few posts ago, when I was talking about “Til I Hear You Sing” from Love Never Dies, I called Anthony Warlow “the absolute best male voice on Broadway in the past fifty years.” This is one heck of a claim, because I’m not actually an authoritative source on these things, and because there are a lot… Read More Songs from Musicals: #22, “Confrontation,” from Jekyll & Hyde
Honorable mentions: “But, Mr. Adams,” “Cool, Cool Considerate Men” There was a musical about the Founding Fathers years before Hamilton was dreamed of; heck, it was first performed more than ten years before Lin-Manuel Miranda was born. And in these rankings, a song from 1776 outshines a song from Hamilton, and a little balance is restored to the universe. The… Read More Songs from Musicals: #23, “Molasses to Rum,” from 1776
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
Seeing Things Secondhand 