Broadway showtunes rarely get the exposure that music from the world of pop music enjoys. However, everyone once and a while someone with mass exposure records a song from a Broadway musical and enjoys a hit with it. Today I share a simple playlist of these exciting anomalies…
Some musical are period pieces, written with the intention of telling a story in another and place. Other musicals are written as contemporary stories, starting out relevant and feeling edgy and new, only to become dated quickly. Their shelf-life is short for the reason that times change, attitudes change, vernacular changes, and what is relevant today could be irrelevant tomorrow. One musical that enjoyed popularity when it opened in the `1970s, but that hasn’t exactly held up against the test of time is I Love My Wife.
Long before there was a film called The Greatest Showman, Broadway had its own musical version of the life of P.T. Barnum. This show, simply called Barnum, featured a score with music by Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, City of Angels), lyrics by Michael Stewart (I Love My Wife) and a book by Mark Bramble (42ndStreet). Using the three-ring circus as the conceit for telling Barnum’s rise to fame as the King of Flim-Flam, much in the way Cabaret was set within a cabaret and Chicago within the confines of a vaudeville show, Barnum utilized its setting as a metaphor the risks that come with becoming a success, walking that proverbial tightrope known as “life”.
Lerner and Loewe certainly wrote some gorgeous music together for Broadway and Hollywood musicals. From Brigadoon to My Fair Lady, from Gigi to Camelot, the duo crafted lush, elegant music with sweeping melodies and intelligent, character developing lyrics. The duo also wrote the score for another musical that is seldom revived today, on Broadway or otherwise, but that deserves to be remembered for its potent, often haunting score. That musical is Paint Your Wagon.
