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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CFOuGqBSEE 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… Read More Songs from Musicals: #24, “Burn,” from Hamilton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sH3mjOsZY0 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… Read More Songs from Musicals: #25, “Bottle Dance,” from Fiddler on the Roof
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbE6u07gJUw 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… 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!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11jJu5hMrn8 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… 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
Seeing Things Secondhand 