I've been alternating the albums in my Top 150 Albums By Women project with cast albums, so I'll share my favorite five from these as I listen to them as well.
This is a very specific discovery of a cast album -- the original Broadway cast version of Newsies. I grew up on the original movie, loving so many of those songs, but had never given the cast album much of a shot. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, my top songs were mostly the ones that were written for the original movie as well. The only original song that came close to cracking the top five was "That's Rich," a song written for a character whose songs in the movie were terrible. "That's Rich" is a huge improvement, but still not quite enough to win when up against some of the truly great songs carried over from the film.
So here are my top five.
5. Santa Fe. I love the ending piece of this song, and I love that they changed that really dumb lyric from "I want space, not just air" to "I want space and fresh air." (Like... what did that even mean before? Did he have an overabundance of air in New York City?) My issue here is that despite loving Jeremy Jordan overall, I do not like him in this show, and certainly not in this song. He's not pleasant to listen to nor does his attempt at an emotional portrayal works for me. It comes around by the end, but it's a rough enough listen at the beginning that it's leaving now.
4. Seize the Day. This was never one of my favorite songs, but the reason it stuck around through #4 out of 17 songs is because of its new intro. The original version is very repetitive and goes on for a very long time, and its intro was just a slowed-down version of the rest of the song. But I absolutely love this new intro. I love the line, "Say to all the others who cannot follow through / You're still our brothers and we will fight for you." I love, "And a prayer becomes a vow." I love so much of it. Oddly, it flags for me once it gets going in the rest of the song -- but this has always been a dance-heavy song more than anything, and that loses something when just listened to.
3. The World Will Know. The final three songs on this list are all so good. There's such a delightful anthemic marching feel to this one. I don't even really have much else to say it, I just love it a lot.
2. Once and For All. This one comes into its own in the Broadway cast recording in a way that it didn't in the movie. It always felt like a kind of half-song there, while here it definitely stands out here -- obviously, since it made it to #2. The harmonies on "All of these guys who are sick of the lies getting ready to rise to the call" are stunning.
1. Carrying the Banner. It was unlikely anything other than this was ever going to win, unless the cast album version super messed it up, but they did not. It's such a delightful upbeat song, one of my favorite "wake up and go to work" songs. The last minute or so where the chorus all comes together in one giant amazing power sound is just fantastic.
Next up, I return to the Top 150 Albums by Women. I'll be listening to Ofra Haza's "Fifty Gates of Wisdom," which is on Spotify, if you would like to join me!
