The Musicals Meme
Apr. 4th, 2005 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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admnaismith: Guess my favorite songs (one each, to make it a challenge for both of us) from my favorite ten musicals:
1. Chicago -- This was really, really tough, because (as the case with most of these shows) I really frickin' love almost all of the numbers. It finally came down to "All I Care About", which ices the cake on our cast fantastically, and the final winner, "They Both Reached For The Gun", one of the best combinations of music, lyrics, and choreography ever.
2. Godspell -- "All For The Best", the duet between Jesus and John the Baptist, is such a wonderful, joy-filled number, capturing both scripture and spirit and making them catchy as all get-out.
3. Chess -- In "The Deal", the American (the former chess champion of the world, now working for the Soviet Union) tries to entice back his former partner Florence with hints about her forgotten childhood, while trying to persuade/bribe/threaten the Russian player, now Florence's lover, to throw the match. What the American doesn't see is that Florence and the Russian see right through him, and are aghast that even he would stoop so low. Leads directly into the tour-de-force "Pity The Child", which is my second-favorite.
4. Weird Romance -- "My Orderly World", the opening number for Act Two, Her Pilgrim Soul, perfectly captures a man who wants to feel passion, knows he should feel passion... but simply can't, and has no idea why -- and the fact that he has no idea why is just as bad.
5. Little Shop of Horrors -- "Feed Me (Git It)" is one of the unacknowledged gems of musical theater -- a perfect plot song, dialogue song, challenging and fun to sing, and smacks you from hilarity to horror and back again and back again.
6. Disney's Beauty and the Beast (full Broadway version) -- one of the only lacks in the animated Beauty and the Beast was that the Beast didn't get his own song -- in fact, he gets one verse of an ensemble piece. "If I Can't Love Her" and its reprise more than make up for that -- the Beast's loneliness, frustration, rage, and longing are palpable, and on a sheer performance level Terence Mann kicks all kinds of ass. My only regret is that they aren't in the enhanced version of the movie.
7. Assassins -- Of all the songs that highlight the insanity, the purpose, the complex diseases of the mind felt by these people, nothing focuses it so well as "Gun Song", which builds to four-part harmony and demonstrates how several utterly different people can be drawn to the same conclusion. "What a wonder is a gun... what a beautiful invention -- first of all, when you've a gun [klik]... everybody pays attention...."
8. Sweeney Todd -- No contest. While the entire opera, start to finish, is one of the most glorious creations of American music, the theater-rattling, blood-chilling "Epiphany" cannot merely be sung, cannot merely be acted... it has to be lived by the performer, and Len Cariou and George Hearn (in their various recordings) reach out right through the speakers and grab your throat.
9. The Music Man -- "Seventy-Six Trombones", and its reprise in tandem with "Goodnight, My Someone", are the most important songs in this tightly written musical. In the first one, we reach the crescendo of Harold Hill's sales pitch -- this is where he has to hook their asses on buying the band, and Robert Preston's building energy reigned in by a sudden drop to nearly hushed reverence as he intones "... and John Philip Sousa" makes you hungry for those first musical notes. The reprise? Same thing, except Harold suddenly realizes he's beginning to sell an entirely new product... to himself.
10. Pippin -- "Glory" not only codifies the madness of war in both senses -- its pointlessness and its emotional appeal -- but does so in a way which almost but doesn't quite parody itself. Brilliant lyrical work.
Thanks to everyone for playing!
(Goodness. I could've really messed you guys up with this one -- nothing here from Metropolis, or Moby Dick, or Return to the Forbidden Planet, or....)
admnaismith: Guess my favorite songs (one each, to make it a challenge for both of us) from my favorite ten musicals:1. Chicago -- This was really, really tough, because (as the case with most of these shows) I really frickin' love almost all of the numbers. It finally came down to "All I Care About", which ices the cake on our cast fantastically, and the final winner, "They Both Reached For The Gun", one of the best combinations of music, lyrics, and choreography ever.
2. Godspell -- "All For The Best", the duet between Jesus and John the Baptist, is such a wonderful, joy-filled number, capturing both scripture and spirit and making them catchy as all get-out.
3. Chess -- In "The Deal", the American (the former chess champion of the world, now working for the Soviet Union) tries to entice back his former partner Florence with hints about her forgotten childhood, while trying to persuade/bribe/threaten the Russian player, now Florence's lover, to throw the match. What the American doesn't see is that Florence and the Russian see right through him, and are aghast that even he would stoop so low. Leads directly into the tour-de-force "Pity The Child", which is my second-favorite.
4. Weird Romance -- "My Orderly World", the opening number for Act Two, Her Pilgrim Soul, perfectly captures a man who wants to feel passion, knows he should feel passion... but simply can't, and has no idea why -- and the fact that he has no idea why is just as bad.
5. Little Shop of Horrors -- "Feed Me (Git It)" is one of the unacknowledged gems of musical theater -- a perfect plot song, dialogue song, challenging and fun to sing, and smacks you from hilarity to horror and back again and back again.
6. Disney's Beauty and the Beast (full Broadway version) -- one of the only lacks in the animated Beauty and the Beast was that the Beast didn't get his own song -- in fact, he gets one verse of an ensemble piece. "If I Can't Love Her" and its reprise more than make up for that -- the Beast's loneliness, frustration, rage, and longing are palpable, and on a sheer performance level Terence Mann kicks all kinds of ass. My only regret is that they aren't in the enhanced version of the movie.
7. Assassins -- Of all the songs that highlight the insanity, the purpose, the complex diseases of the mind felt by these people, nothing focuses it so well as "Gun Song", which builds to four-part harmony and demonstrates how several utterly different people can be drawn to the same conclusion. "What a wonder is a gun... what a beautiful invention -- first of all, when you've a gun [klik]... everybody pays attention...."
8. Sweeney Todd -- No contest. While the entire opera, start to finish, is one of the most glorious creations of American music, the theater-rattling, blood-chilling "Epiphany" cannot merely be sung, cannot merely be acted... it has to be lived by the performer, and Len Cariou and George Hearn (in their various recordings) reach out right through the speakers and grab your throat.
9. The Music Man -- "Seventy-Six Trombones", and its reprise in tandem with "Goodnight, My Someone", are the most important songs in this tightly written musical. In the first one, we reach the crescendo of Harold Hill's sales pitch -- this is where he has to hook their asses on buying the band, and Robert Preston's building energy reigned in by a sudden drop to nearly hushed reverence as he intones "... and John Philip Sousa" makes you hungry for those first musical notes. The reprise? Same thing, except Harold suddenly realizes he's beginning to sell an entirely new product... to himself.
10. Pippin -- "Glory" not only codifies the madness of war in both senses -- its pointlessness and its emotional appeal -- but does so in a way which almost but doesn't quite parody itself. Brilliant lyrical work.
Thanks to everyone for playing!
(Goodness. I could've really messed you guys up with this one -- nothing here from Metropolis, or Moby Dick, or Return to the Forbidden Planet, or....)
