We Need Some Light

I often think about theatre songs in terms of categories, I Want songs, I Am songs, Eleven O'Clock Numbers, Act Two Openers, etc. But a while back, my friend Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Broadway producer, author, and artsy wonder woman, posted (seemingly randomly though you never know with Jen), this post:

My favorite kinds of musical theatre songs, ranked:
1. Song about being a cowboy, inventor, explorer, etc. that is secretly about being a musical theatre writer
2. Large ensemble number with counterpoint
3. Song where all characters sing at the lead about how smart they are
4. Ballad

So first of all, I love her Number 1. That could only come from her brain, but I immediately see the truth in it, as I am both a musical theatre fanboy and a musical theatre writer.

And then I thought, what are my favorite kinds of theatre songs? That's not hard at all.

1. First-Ten-Minutes Song
2. Fight/Argument Song
3. Soaring, powerful Finale that makes me cry from overwhelming emotion
4. "Dirty," i.e., very vulgar or obscene, song
5. Song full of cultural references 

For me, there's nothing as cool, as exciting, and in the hands of great writers, as intricate as the opening number of a contemporary musical. I guess the model for this kind of song would be the title song from Company or the opening of Into the Woods. So much information -- textual, thematic, and musical -- so much storytelling going on, including characters, relationships, conflicts, etc.

I think my favorite in this category has to be "The Last Real Record Store on Earth," which opens High Fidelity. It accomplishes so much, all the usual stuff, but it also sets up the unusual way music is used in this score, all of it in the style of Rob's music gods, all the musical choices telling us something important about Rob and his journey. But a close second is the opening number in Bat Boy, which also sets up tons of information, all while delivering wacky laugh after wacky laugh, and introducing several of the important musical themes that run throughout the score.

Other amazing examples include the first numbers of Next to Normal, Urinetown, Cry-Baby, Sweet Smell of Success, A Chorus Line, Heathers, My Fair Lady, The Music Man, Yeast Nation, Assassins...

For me, nothing is cooler in a musical than serious emotional heft, and one of the most powerfully emotional moments in a musical is often a really intense, high-stakes fight. Think about incredible moments like "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls, "Ever After" in bare, "Your Fault" in Into the Woods, "You Don't Know"/"I Am the One" in Next to Normal, "Goodbye, Love" in Rent, "Make Me Happy" in Lippa's Wild Party... there are so many...

I love those moments in the theatre (usually in musical theatre, but sometimes in non-musical theatre too) when the emotion is so powerful that it becomes overwhelming. Finales are especially good at this. Tears come streaming down my cheeks, not because I'm sad, but because my emotions are so massive, so uncontainable, they are literally overflowing. Same reason people cry at weddings, as described in "I Love to Cry at Weddings" in Sweet Charity. Usually, it's not just the song itself -- it's that song at that moment, expressing that emotion, sung by that character, at that spot in the story. The power comes from everything that has come before.

Here are a few prime examples of soaring, powerful finales that make me cry -- "The Impossible Dream" reprise at the end of Man of La Mancha; "One Voice" from bare; "I Feel So Much Spring" from A New Brain; "We Need Some Light" from Next to Normal; "Time of Your Life" from American Idiot; "Voices in My Head" from Be More Chill; "Being Alive" from Company; "How Did We Come to This?" from Lippa's The Wild Party; and more than any other, the reprise of "Sunday" at the end of Sunday in the Park with George. When they all bow to George on the word, "forever," the tears come in torrents. It's so incredibly beautiful and emotional.

I will admit, that no matter how sophisticated, how complex, how dark my musicals are, I love a good dirty show tune. Vulgarity, obscenity, and sexuality are all interesting topics to explore in a piece of theatre, so there's no reason a theatre song can't go there. But it's still unusual for a song in a musical to be really dirty (excepting Hair and Bukowsical, of course), so when it happens, it feels really subversive. It works best when it comes organically out of the story; nothing is more boring than dirty words just to be shocking (I'm looking at you, Book of Mormon).

Some of my favorite dirty theatre songs include the hilarious "Blue" from Heathers; "Deeper in the Woods" from The Robber Bridegroom; "Old-Fashioned Lesbian" in Lippa's The Wild Party; "Sodomy" from Hair; "I Beat My Meat" from Naked Boys Singing: "By Threes" from I Love My Wife; and "Alone at a Drive-In Movie" from Grease. Would you be surprised to know there are many more?

My other love is theatre songs full of cultural references. If it's a good show, those references give us important information about who these characters are, their time and place and culture, etc. They're fun to listen to, but if they're good, they're also fun to study and dissect.

Some fun examples include the granddaddy of them all, "You're the Top" from Anything Goes; "La Vie Boheme" from Rent; "Midnight Radio" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch; "Get Down Get Dark Get Dirty" from Bukowsical; "Initials" from Hair; "Mushnik and Son" from Little Shop of Horror; and there are lots more.

Actors hate "list songs" because there's usually no internal logic in the progression of the lyric -- it's just a list -- and that makes it much harder to memorize. But those songs are still fun for the rest of us.

We can't make musical theatre right now, but it's still fun to think about it... and write about it...  and speaking of which... check out my recent musical theatre books, if you haven't already...

Long Live the Musical! And Stay Safe!
Scott