So Much Stuff to Sing

It's episode 150! Yay! Something we completely forget to mention during our pretty intense and serious conversation about this episode's topic: "I'm Alive" from the Pulitzer Prize-winning show Next to Normal . Tom Kitt and Briant Yorkey worked on developing their show and concept for about a decade before it reached Broadway, winning widepsread acclaim, though not the Tony for Besy Musical. It als...

We enter the 21st century with The Producers , one of the biggest things ever to hit The Great White Way. A combination of Mel Brooks' genius, classical musical comedy trops, and the star power of Broadway vets Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, the show feels like a throwback to an earlier time -- and it was just what audiences wanted in 2001. But is it what audiences want in 2026? Join us as we...

A dark stage. Night. And then a clarion cry pierces the silence. A call and response forms. Dawn is breaking, and a new age of Broadway is born. Disney's The Lion King was perhaps the least likely of its properties to become an extremely long-running -- and critically acclaimed -- stage adaptatation. While a smash hit in theaters and home video, its characters are all animals, with not a single hu...

Is there anything more 1990s coded that the Broadway smash Rent ? An immediate hit and media sensation, partly due to the tragic death of show composer Jonathan Larson just before it debuted, the show made Broadway cool, spoke urgently to a younger audience, and changed the face of Broadway. Broadway is still very much living in the world that  Rent helped build. We talk the show, the fandom, and...

We now enter the 1990s with William Finn and James Lapine's landmark musical Falsettos . It's an interesting show with a rather convoluted creation process, leading to something quite idiosyncratic and entirely its own thing. Shannon is a strong Pro, Erik is a confused Maybe, and the song is "Unlikely Lovers." Content warning: this show, this song, and this episode feature discussions of HIV/AIDS...

While the 80s were undeniably the age of the megamusical, they were also a time when more artistically inclined shows found alternative methods of making their way to Broadway. One of the first of these -- and perhaps the most artisitic -- was Stephen Sondheim's return to Broadway (after a relatively short absence). Along with his new collaorator, James Lapine, Sondheim gave us his most personal a...

A new day has begun, indeed. The 1980s brought many changes to Broadway, especially the arrival of the London-import megamusical that would run, well, seemingly forever, and its champion, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Join us we talk about how Broadway was changing, how  Cats fed into that, and try to pinpoint what, exactly "Memory" -- with lyrics by Trevor Nunn -- is actually about. Editor's note: This is...

The end of the 70s and, in some ways, the end of an era. Starting with Cabaret, we have traced the changes happening in theater in the wake of the end of the Golden Age. More mature themes and language, less traditional storytelling, new kinds of music, and simply a broader range of acceptable topics -- all of these changes and more occurred extrmely rapidly. And while it's hard to pinpoint exact...

1975. The Broadway musical is maturing and evolving, and while it's probing deeper than ever before, this new style of musical has yet to produce a record-breaking smash. Enter  A Chorus Line . The first show to set any number of performance records, A Chorus Line was an unlikely smash, seeing as it had no famous stars, was written by a group of relatively unknown theatrical creators, and was abou...

We enter the 1970s: the era of Sondheim and Prince, of a modern Broadway for modern audiences, and of something new and vital that comes to take the place of a Broadway musical formula that had ceased to please. Everything kicks off with Sondheim's 1970 masterpiece Company : directed by Prince, with a book by George Furth and choreogeraphy by Michael Bennet, the show would usher in a new type of B...

The 60s roll on, and we come to the show that, more than any other, defines the 1960s musical:  Hair . The ultimate hippie musical that broke barriers and box office records, Hair has become synonymous with the late 60s counterculture, even though its creators weren't truly a part of it. Still, it addresses sex, race, and numerous other taboo topics head-on in a way that is still uncommon to see,...

And so, with a seemingly endless wash from the cymbals, we enter the modern era. It's 1966, Hal Prince has taken to directing instead of producing, and John Kander and Fred Ebb are going to give life to his vision of a musical about Weimar-era Berlin that would be unlike anything Broadway had ever seen. Cabaret was the show, and, fittingly enough, we're talking about the first song they wrote for...

The 1960s would eventually completely revolutionize huge swaths of the American cultural landcape, including Broadway. But as is often the case, the early part of the decade looks a lot like the decade before: talented young writers, composers, directors, and producers pushing at the boundaries of what Rodgers & Hammerstein had done. It was the Golden Age of the Broadway Musical, and its last mast...

As the 1950s came to a close, Broadway continued to push and expand what could be done in a musical and what was expected of a night at the theater. Stars were becoming less powerful and less of a draw, though some stars found ways to maintain their status by proving that they had a place in the new style of show tha cared more about the truth of a character than simply star power. Once such star...

As the 1950s moved on, new talents were emerging, taking up the challenge laid down by Rodgers and Hammerstein to create integrated musicals featuring real characters dealing with real issues. Among others, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim heard that challenge and rose to meet it, creating something brand new and incredibly challening for 50s Broadway audien...

Rodgers & Hammerstein ushered in a new style with Oklahoma! in 1943, and soon, the old styles died away, putting up various degrees of resistance as they did so. Irving Berlin and Cole Porter both adopted a more R&H approach with their late 40s musicals, but it wasn't only existing masters who were influenced by the new approach. 1950 brought  Guys & Dolls to Broadway, with Frank Loesser making hi...

There's something deeply symbolic -- perhaps almost too much so -- about the Golden Era of the American Musical being ushered in by a song called "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'." But sometimes history is not subtle in her imagery, so here we are. The opening number to Rodgers & Hammerstein's 1943 absolute smash hit and epochal achivement,  Oklahoma! , "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" is modest and si...

Time marches on, and so does our exploration of the American musical's first century. In this episode, we say a bittersweet farewell to the musical comedy as it existed in the 20s and 30s, the era of the Great American Songbook, and the partnership of Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart. Join us as we discuss "My Funny Valentine" from 1937's Babes in Arms . All clips are from a 1953's Chet Baker Sings a...

Stop 2 on our 100 year trip through the history of the American musical: 1935 and Porgy & Bess .  With music by George Gershwin and lyrics by his brother Ira and original Porgy novelist Debose Heyward, Porgy & Bess was immediately hailed as a masterpiece when it debuted in 1935, though it has been troubled from the start by the question of whether it's too much of an opera to be a musical, and vic...

Welcome to 2026, where we're going to go through the first 100 years of the American Musical from its earliest days until the present to track the changes along the way. As a musical once said, the beginning is a very good place to start, so we're starting with 1927's Showboat -- arguably the beginning of what we'd come to call the American Musical. Written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II,...

After another plague of delays, we finally complete our miniseries on aging with the darkest and most brutal depiction of it we've seen. Once again, we return to Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy with "The Private and Intimate Life of the House." This isn't a fun one, so listen with care.   We will be back on January 15, 2026 with something unlike we've ever done -- stay tu...

Another grandmother joins us for this installment in our songs about aging, though Abuela Claudia isn't just anyone's grandmother, she is everyone's grandmother. Her solo "Patiencia Y Fe" is one of the standout moments in the standout score of Lin-Manuel Miranda's breakthrough show In the Heights , and Olga Merediz gives it everything she has.  All clips are from 2008's In the Heights: Original Br...

We're back! We had an illness related delay, which was us being thematic, since illness is part of growing older...yeah, let's go with that.  But we are back on track and here to talk about Stephen Schwartz's Pippin. In particular, we're looking at the 2012 revival and Andrea Martin's performance of "No Time at All." Definitely watch the performance for the full effect. You'll be glad you did. All...

Out with the new and in with the old! Yes, we're moving from songs about growing up to songs about the act of having grown up, i.e., songs about aging and growing old.  We're starting with a song from a show we have been slightly remiss in having only discussed once way back in the early days of our podcast, despite its tremendous popularity and cultural impact. Join us as we talk about "Sunrise,...

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy podcast. After 5 years and 125 episodes, we're finally talking about one of the major smashes of the past decade: Pasek and Paul's Dear Evan Hansen . Winner of 6 Tonys -- including Best Actor for overnight sensation Ben Platt -- the show has had quite the interesting journey over the past couple of years. So join us as we talk about the DEH phenomeno...