Can Musical Soundtracks Back Our Lives?
I was a kid with a dream; I wanted to be on Broadway. Musicals used to be everything to me. In highschool I was in jazz band. I spent two years of my undergrad in a musical theatre conservatory, it was there that musicals started to be inefficient to what I was feeling inside.
There are a lot of reasons I ceased to listen to musicals as my daily tracks. At school I had started to perform them constantly, I gained other dreams than being on Broadway, suddenly everyone around me loved musicals so I didn’t have to remind everyone why it was really great, and I began discovering music outside musicals so the tracks I had always been listening to became old. Although I’ve lost touch with musical soundtracks, there are times when these soundtracks sneak up on me and prove themselves relevant. One day I came to work and the baker was playing the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, followed by the soundtrack for Hadestown and Mean Girls. While these are strong soundtracks individually, played randomly and one after another, they don’t only lose their effect but clash. This is exactly how I used to listen to musicals in my highschool life, just randomly and without a lot of connection to my life. I enjoyed thinking about playing the roles, I liked the instrumentation, and the soaring belting voices. But at the cafe I work at, the Broadway alter ego of Regina George belting her brains out about the highs and lows of highschool, though nostalgic didn’t seem to fit the vibe that morning.
Another time, as my friend was working at Fort Henry, they took a picture on top of the hill and accompanied it with “On Top of the World” from the Hunchback of Notre Dame.To me, this use of a musical track was much more effective because it held intention–it used a song's meaning to accompany a matching moment in time. Another example, Waitress is always a soundtrack I listen to while baking for its obvious cohesion to the act, encapsulated in the sweet melodies of Sara Bareilles.
My main argument has often been that in the structure of a musical, music is very specific and distinct to the characters. The main reason people say they don’t like musicals is because it’s unrealistic and cheesy that someone would just burst out into song.There’s a lot of ways to describe the concept of singing in music theatre. It’s a form of aesthetic distance or suspense where we can take in that it’s not real life but a story we should take meaning away from. The practice is also supposed to be internally motivated, the characters start singing when speaking isn’t enough to get what they want. It’s an outward way of getting their feelings out and often people are uncomfortable doing that themselves. Therefore, musical theatre is full of vulnerable emotion brought to life by courageous performers, while that may seem far-fetched I think it can also be uncomfortable for people. Simultaneously musical theatre challenges, accepts, ridicules, is sensitive all while singing and dancing and perhaps that’s a lot for people to process when we are used to simple, linear songs.
One of the reasons I love musical theatre is all the different genres it takes on. I credit my relatively new love for rock to Rent, a genre my highschool self could never get behind. Musical theatre inspired me to form interests in new genres. For others, musical theatre has the ability to be formed into genres people are interested in and can start to see musical theatre's value. This is why, in highschool, the rap musical Hamiltion was so popular. I saw a lot of people who had never heard a musical obsessed over Hamilton’s soundtrack because it was a form of their usual music taste. This same reason is why we get Jukebox musicals; musicals made of an artists or groups discography and turned into a story like Mama Mia (ABBA), Jersey Boys (Frankie Valli) and Beautiful (Carol King). It is an accessible way for people to be more interested in a musical because it draws on songs that they already know and love. Jukebox musicals also have the power to get larger crowds which is helpful for a struggling business like theatre. Historically, in the golden age of musical theatre, the pieces produced for those musicals were mainstream pieces for people back then to purchase and play on their pianoforte. A lot of golden age songs were covered by Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga, these are pretty true forms of musical theatre that can be from an aesthetic jazz perspective. One of the most popular covers of an original musical theatre piece is “My Funny Valentine” sung by Frank Sinatra that originally came from the show Babes and Arms (1937) by Rogers and Hart before the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein duo who wrote pieces like The Sound of Music.Today this is not the case as there are so many artists outside the scope of musical theatre.
Today musical theatre is so diverse and specific to shows I think music theatre soundtracks are most effective played how the composers intended, together and one after the other. Unless, they are very aesthetically similar. Therefore below are really great soundtracks with the moods and events that I think are best suited. Since a lot of us in the MUSE music team love indie rock I’ve compiled a playlist that is made of broadway-rock tracks. This is really my attempt to reconnect with a genre I’ve lost touch with and perhaps a new genre for you to discover.
She Loves Me
Perfect for a fancy occasion like getting ready to go out for dinner, to see a play etc. She Loves Me is a solid Golden Age musical!
Once
Major coffee shop vibes with an acoustic filled soundtrack.
Hades Town
Making art, drawing etc. Almost entirely sung through, you’ll get a good sense of the story based on the Greek Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Company
Written by the late genius Stephen Sondheim who also wrote brilliant pieces like Into the Woods and West Side Story. Company is the perfect quarter life crisis soundtrack. The newest production gender-swapped the lead Bobby!
Header by: Aliya Conrad
