Not that we’d ever compare ourselves to Shakespeare — the women on our staff are all played by actual women, thank you very much — but the quote is relevant when the topic at hand is music from the stage (showtunes, if you must). Musicals as a genre extend far beyond what we think of as modern music — whose timeline might begin with the original blues recordings of the 20s — having been a part of modern culture for literally centuries.
What’s been interesting in recent years is how Broadway and the big screen and the pop music world have intermixed and cross-pollinated to the point where you have pop stars writing or starring in Broadway works, and Broadway shows germinating from movies, whether live-action or animated. There’s the musical written by a folk-rock star that became an infamous crash-and-burn story (Paul Simon’s The Capeman), a musical written by a progressive rock group’s chief composer starring Sigmund Freud (Freudiana) and a musical (Mamma Mia) built around the back catalogue of a pop group (ABBA). Musicals have always been with us, but today have become more thoroughly integrated than ever with the rest of modern pop culture.
With those thoughts in mind, the DV is proud to announce that the theme of our February retrospective is musicals.
The range of material covered will be expansive, from the hippie extratravangazas of the 60s (Hair) to 80s classics (Les Miserables) to recent smashes (Rent) to the work of the modern master himself Andrew Lloyd Webber (Phantom Of The Opera).
Starting Friday, February 1 and extending all the way through Leap Day on Friday, February 29, the Daily Vault’s writing staff will report back every weekday with one of 21 musical soundtracks. In a departure from our customary options of moving either chronologically or at random, we will sing our ABCs this time and proceed all the way from Avenue Q to Young Frankenstein. The majority of these reviews will be appearing on the Vault for the first time.
Founded in January 1997, the Daily Vault has featured more than 5,200 reviews of more than 2,500 artists covering almost the entire musical spectrum, written by a volunteer review staff from around the world. Previous Artist Of The Month retrospectives have spotlighted the work of artists from Tori Amos to Frank Zappa, including the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Garth Brooks, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Pearl Jam, Radiohead and many others. Themed retrospectives have included punk, hip-hop, dynamic debuts, classic jazz, women who rock and “the first album I ever bought.”
