Top 10 Songs From Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Season 3)

Now that the show has been over for almost a year... I think I've finally decided on my definitive list of the best songs from season 3. We'll give season 4 a bit more time to settle in. So here are my top 10!

10. The Buzzing From the Bathroom

In what could have been a tiny throwaway moment, a side character who's usually the butt of the joke suddenly realizes that, well, his wife hasn't been as magically swept away by his sexual performance as he thought she was, and far from sneaking off to "brush her teeth" after every time they have sex, she's almost certainly using a sex toy. It's the kind of joke that is often used on an annoying sitcom side character who thinks they're all that, but in this show the character gets an enormous, dramatic, "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables"-style ballad. (And they actually address the fact in a later conversation that if she was lying to him about how great their sex life all this time, that's at least partly on her! He can't fix what he doesn't know about!) This song itself is one of the more vocally ambitious tunes Crazy Ex has attempted, and I love that it's given to such a minor character. And the song is delightful.

Best line: "I'm haunted by the buzzing from the bathroom, like tinnitus of the loins."



9. The Moment Is Me

After being a college student for years, Heather finally accumulates enough credits that they force her to graduate, and she's not sure how to feel about it. To her horror, she is compelled to sing an inspirational musical theater song about it being her time to shine. It's hilarious, especially knowing Heather's characterization as a deadpan, too-cool-for-anything sidekick. The contrast between the expression on her face and in her voice and the High School Musical enthusiasm of the background dancers continues to be hilarious to me.

Best line: "'Cause the clock just keeps on ticking, it doesn't care that time goes by. (What?)"



8. I Go to the Zoo

Nathaniel lets down his guard more than ever this season, and one of my favorite moments of that is in this song, where he starts with a Drake-style "look at me and my money and how many women want to be with me" and it turns into a bizarre ode to the zoo. The video for it is even funnier, with these slow-motion "cool guy" walks past zoo animals.

Best line: "Sometimes even the zoo isn't enough, so then... I go to the aquarium. It's like a zoo for fishies."



7. F***ton of Cats

(Originally in the show as "Buttload of Cats," but as usual, I prefer the explicit version.)

Oh man, this song would have scored even higher for me if I had first encountered it in my single days. I was all about upbeat songs about being alone forever. And this one is hilarious. Rebecca has decided she's going to be single for the rest of her life, so she might as well just get started doing what forever-single women do: get Way Too Many Cats. The lyrics here are funny and clever, but the visual jokes and line deliveries are even more so, from the other cat customer's "And cats!" to the cat puppets to Rachel's exceptionally jaunty walk to the cat store. And this time around watching the video, I was really amused by the cat in the lower lefthand corner, which is either not a very pliable puppet or has a very unenthusiastic puppeteer, because it is not trying to match its mouth movements to the lyrics. (Most visible on "We gotta work on our collective image" around 1:40, where it opens its mouth four times in rhythm while the others enthusiastically mouth every line.) It's just such a fun upbeat song, and it's so much fun to sing along with.

Best line: "The ironic part is we're not that friendly. If you're lonely, we might make it worse. Also, we sleep like 16 hours a day. Have you considered getting a dog?"



6. Strip Away My Conscience

O for more fun songs for altos to sing! I partly like this song just because it's in such an amazing range for me, but it's also got such a great sleazy sound to it, and the lyrics play with the concept of "evil = sexy" in such an entertaining way. Rachel Bloom does an incredible job of taking sexual tropes and stereotypes and emphasizing them in a very funny way -- "The Math of Love Triangles," my favorite song from season two, is another great example of that. One of my favorite moments here (though I saved my favorite line for down below) is in between verses, when she does the "Stop hitting yourself" bit, demonstrating hilariously that this character does not have a sense of where that line is between hot and just mean.

Best line: "Innuendooooo!"



5. Nothing Is Ever Anyone's Fault

This song is one of my favorite examples of the narrative this show fights against -- the idea that nobody can control what they do, we are controlled by fate or our genes and don't have to take responsibility or make tough decisions. It's especially funny, though, when framed in terms of a big romantic ballad -- Nathaniel's transition from explaining how nothing is his fault to "I can't control that I'm in love with you" is hilarious, and Rebecca gets sucked into it partly because of the temptation of blaming all her issues on someone else and partly because it's a moment of romantic confession from him. Fortunately, by the end of the episode she's come to terms with the fact that she can't hide behind her diagnosis and her parental abuse anymore -- they may explain what she does, but they don't excuse those actions. Contrary to the song's lyrics, psychology is not a great excuse.

Best line: "I understand what makes me frightened and sad, so now I still do bad things, but are they actually bad? No! Because nothing is anyone's fault!"



4. My Sperm Is Healthy

So I got to the top four on my list and texted Jacob saying, "I'm stuck. All of these songs are my favorite. What do I do?" He helpfully responded, "Choose the one you like the least!" So I guuuuuesss that's this one but the top four on my list are all gold.

Anyway, "My Sperm Is Healthy." Rebecca's boss Darryl has decided he wants to have a baby with a surrogate, so he gets himself tested to make sure the odds are good before he starts the process. In this song, he gets the results of the tests back, and, as you can guess from the title, it's good news. I laughed out loud when the song begins with his co-worker Mrs. Hernandez going, "Ugh, this is going to be gross," because, yes, it is, but it's also kind of glorious. It takes the musical tropes of guys bragging about their sexual prowess and uses them to instead empathize with a middle-aged man who loves being a parent so much that he wants another one even without a partner. Darryl's glee at learning he can indeed father a child is infectious. This is another one where the explicit version is funnier to me, but there's no video version of that one, so you get the CW-approved version.

Best line: The string of Tom Hanks puns out of nowhere. "I'm in a league of my own, just like Tom Hanks / Not a cast away when I blast away / That thing I do is inseminate you."


3. Fit Hot Guys Have Problems Too

This season saw the unexpected buddying up of Nathaniel and White Josh as they both got over breakups that they denied meant anything to them. They bonded over their obsessive gym workouts, but it's not until this song that they (and, halfway through, Josh Chan) bond over their broken hearts, and perform a song about how just because they're attractive doesn't mean they don't have issues of their own to deal with. But, of course, since it's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, they also do it while showing off the attractive bodies they're usually so proud of and use as a defense against the world's cruelty... until it doesn't work anymore. (...CXG had an unusually high number of stripping songs this season. And they were all good.)

Best line: "It's just hard to process emotions with our clothes on."

2. I've Got My Head in the Clouds

And now for a much less sex-related song than the last two... this one is about religion! Or, rather, about using religion to run from your problems. Josh Chan has decided to become a priest so he doesn't have to deal with the stress of relationships. This does not turn out to be a sustainable plan, but for a short while he's happy about how great it is that being one of God's top guys will mean all his problems will be automatically solved and he'll never be sad or confused about anything again. (Incidentally, I like that in dealing with this issue, the show doesn't look down on religion -- it's very reminiscent of Mother Superior in Sound of Music's, "These walls were not built to shut out problems. You have to face them.") Anyway, Josh is channeling Gene Kelly here with some killer dance moves, and the whole thing is so joyous and fun and silly that it always makes me smile.

Best line: "Whoa! That's what you look like?" "It's what YOU think I look like! Now let's dance!"



And before I get to my #1, my runner-ups included...

• After Everything You Made Me Do (That I Didn't Ask For) - Rebecca's vengeful reprise is so intense and fun.
• A Diagnosis - A beautifully relatable song about "Oh my gosh, we'll finally figure out what's been wrong with me and it'll be OK!"
• Without Love You Can Save the World - Rebecca's enthusiasm is fun, whether she's wholeheartedly pursuing love or wholeheartedly running away from it to save the world like in this song.
• I'm Just a Boy in Love - Season 3 Trent = Season 2 Rebecca and it's amazing.

But my actual #1 song of the season was...

1. Let's Generalize About Men

This is just so ridiculously fun. More than any of the others, it's the one that I've found myself playing at the end of a difficult day at work. Even if my frustrations had nothing whatsoever to do with any men, there's a dramatic, upbeat aggressive tone here that channels the exact right mood for me. It's also an incredibly funny tune about our tendency to generalize when we need to feel better about a situation. It even hits on the stereotype of the sassy gay best friend - they get to be generalized about as well in this song. (...Yay?) It's funny and delightful and maybe the MOST fun one to sing along to on this list. Such good stuff.

Best line: "Why do men never listen and always think about themselves, as opposed to women who always listen and never think about themselves?"

The Best Song From Waitress

So I just recently got familiar with the musical Waitress, and while it's pretty consistently fun and interesting and solid all the way through, there was one song that stood out to me the most, and it's probably not any of the ones you're thinking of.

The song that most captured my attention was "You Will Still Be Mine." It's sung by our protagonist's self-centered abusive husband. It has all the earmarks of a classic love song -- a romantic line the two sing to each other, a hearkening back to the early days of their relationship -- but it's all twisted and dark to highlight his obsessive, controlling nature.

The thing that hits me the most every time I hear it is how he pushes her to say the words that will keep them together. The general overview of the first verse is him remembering back when he used to write her love songs, and he asks her, "What was that one line? Something about sunshine... I sang it every night." And he keeps guessing wrong until she corrects him: "'Til the sun don't shine, you will still be mine." He responds, "That's right!" And the first time I heard it, it sent shivers down my shine. He's doing a subtle abusive thing where he pushes her to promise to be with him, so now if she leaves him, she's the one breaking her promise and don't the wrong thing, not him. She's the one who said the words. His "That's right" in response doubles as both a, "That's right, those were the lyrics" and a "That's right, you will still be mine and I will still be yours and nothing you can do can change that."

It's just such a terrifying song about feeling trapped. I feel claustrophobic for Jenna just listening to it. It's such an incredibly well-written song that touches on the not-always-obvious ways in which abusers hold on to their victims.

Cast Album Discoveries: Shrek the Musical

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. 

I really only ever knew one or two songs from the Broadway musical adaptation of Shrek, so I figured I should listen to the rest of it. Let me say first off, this is not a good musical but it's a listenable cast recording because Brian D'Arcy James does all the vocal and emotional heavy lifting here, much like Ben Platt in Dear Evan Hansen. He sings each song so beautifully it's easier to overlook the cheesy lyrics and mostly-blah melodies. (Seriously, the creative team behind this show are so much better than this. What happened?!)

My five favorites, all of which I do enjoy at least partially:

5. This Is Our Story

My favorite thing about the Shrek story (and I do love the movie) is that it sets up a nontraditional female lead. Sure, she starts out pretty traditional, but by the end it makes the (super rare) point that a not-obviously-pretty woman can still find love and happiness. This song does a pretty good job of capturing the best part of that ending, even though some of the lyrics are pretty cheesy along the way.

4. Don't Let Me Go

While a LOT of these lyrics are pretty bad, the performance energy and upbeat music goes a long way to making it a fun one to listen to anyway.

3. Big Bright Beautiful World (Reprise)

This is a nice reprise because the original version began the show and set the tone of cynicism and having barriers against people, and this is just a lovely, vulnerable little tune of a character coming out of that mindset and professing his love, even though he's not sure it would work. Like I said, Brian D'arcy James really sells these moments!

2. Travel Song

So this one probably wouldn't land this high except I really, really enjoy the musical theatre technique where two characters each have an individual verse to sing and then they sing them both at the same time. Like, that's one of my favorite things and I love it way too much. (They do it in "I Think I Got You Beat" in this show as well, but that song also has like 45 seconds of burping and farting sounds, so... nah.) This one is just jaunty and enjoyable and fluffy.

1. Build a Wall

I am in no way surprised that this won. It was the only one of these top five that I already knew, and I liked it a bit already, but it has the fewest awkward lyrics of the whole show and it allows Brian D'Arcy James to act the heck out of it and make me genuinely care about his character. It's the only one of these that I'm likely to actually add into my regular listening rotation.

Anybody out there really love this show? Or really hate it? Share your thoughts and your own favorites in the comments!

Cast Album Discoveries: The Robber Bridegroom

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 time I listened to the 2016 Off-Broadway cast of The Robber Bridegroom (starring Steven Pasquale, who I like a lot). My five favorites!

5. Once Upon the Natchez Trace. One of those fantastic opening numbers that really sets the scene for what's to come -- in this case, by introducing all the characters and establishing the tall tale nature of the plot. It's fun and entertaining and a great opener to the album.

4. Nothin' Up. An early favorite, partly because it's so rare to find songs for women written for the lower part of my voice and I was excited for it! I especially love the contrast between some of those high wailing notes and the lower, cynical lines. A good one.

3. Deeper in the Woods. I like how different this sounds from the rest of this cast recording. While most of the music is upbeat, this is a haunting coral piece that I just grew to love more and more.

2. Marriage is Riches. This is not one that I expected to last this long, but it's just so delightful and jaunty and silly. The back-and-forth of all the characters wanting different things is all captured hilariously in the tone of the music, and it just kept making me smile.

1. Steal With Style. This was another early favorite. It's so much fun to sing along to, and it does an excellent job of introducing us to our main character. Steven Pasquale sings the heck out of it, too.

Have any of you listened to this one? What did you think of it?

A Ridiculous Rant on Dear Evan Hansen

Note: So... this kind of got away from me as I wrote it. It was intended to be much shorter. But here you go!

Pasek and Paul are musical theatre's favorite people right now after Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I just don't get it. People gush over everything they've done, while I kept listening to individual songs and thinking, "That was... a really boring pop song." They did three songs for the TV show Smash, the songs for La La Land, and the musicals A Christmas Story, Dogfight, and Edges, all of which I have attempted to listen to and then got bored.

Then Dear Evan Hansen came along, and people lost their minds. It was nominated for nine Tonys and won six (including Best Score). Knowing what I did of their work and what the other shows nominated for Best Score were, I was livid about them winning. Then I decided, ya know what, I should try this with an open mind. I should listen to the cast album a couple of times. After all, it's a show about depression and social anxiety. That's an important and personal topic. Surely that's going to connect with me, right?

Listening to the cast album has convinced me of two things:

1. Ben Platt is a national treasure.

2. Nope, these guys still can't write songs with any kind of emotional weight.

This musical and its content were almost guaranteed to make me love it, just for the sole fact that I connect so much to these stories, but the cast album is... a mess. What little works, works because Ben Platt is amazing enough that he can bring depth and characterization to these pretentious, awkward, stilted lyrics.

Their primarily problem is that I constantly feel they are trying really, really, really hard to be deep and provocative in their lyrics. Their use of metaphors is the worst. They repetitively smash them into the audience's head ("Anybody Have a Map?", "Disappear") or they hop around from one clumsy metaphor to the next without thinking about how they connect or what they're actually saying ("Waving Through a Window," "You Will Be Found"). At best, they simply have a character explain plot points that are apparently supposed to make us feel things ("So Big, So Small," "For Forever") but explaining their feelings about them in such cliched language that nothing about it sinks in.

A quick comparison here. Let's look at "Waving Through a Window" and compare it to my favorite song about social anxiety in high school, Joe Iconis' "Michael in the Bathroom."

Notice how few simple personal statements are in "Waving Through a Window." The first verse is probably the most coherent in what it's saying: "I'm afraid to speak because I might screw up so I don't and I run away." It's a little cheesy and heavy-handed but it's OK on its own. The metaphor about sunburn in the bridge is important because it's later repeated in an awkward way.

Then comes the chorus. I. Hate. This. Chorus. Like, I can't follow the character's thought pattern. The first verse makes it clear that he chooses to isolate himself deliberately, while the chorus makes it clear that he feels others isolate him, like he's putting himself out there ("I'm waving," "I'm tap, tap, tapping on the glass," "I try to speak") and they're just ignoring him. I also don't understand even a little bit what "Will I ever be more than I've always been?" is doing in the middle of this line, much less why it's followed by a "'cause" before it goes into "I'm taptaptapping." Is him tapping on the glass what he's always been, or his attempt to be more? THIS SENTENCE DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. And the whole chorus is muddy on whether he's inside or outside, because while he says he's outside, "watching people pass" definitely sounds like he's inside looking out, because who would peek in somebody's window and say "Oh, look at all the people passing?" No. That's something you say about people OUTSIDE.

The second verse is a blissfully clear message as well: "I used to feel normal, but something changed and I don't know where or how." HOWEVER. He ends the verse with "But every sun doesn't rise, and no one tells you where you went wrong." The phrase "every sun doesn't rise" is I think technically correct but it's really awkward phrasing when, of course, some suns do rise and he probably means "not every sun rises"... but the part that really bugs me is that we go right from there into the repeated metaphor about the sun being bad: "Step out, step out of the sun if you keep getting burned." YOU CAN'T HAVE BACK-TO-BACK SUN METAPHORS WHERE IT'S BAD IN ONE AND GOOD IN THE OTHER. They inevitably invite comparison and now I'm not even listening to the second chorus (which is still bad) because I'm just stuck figuring out if the sun that's burning him is from one of the other suns that did rise or what.

The bridge is just an endlessly repeated, ever so slightly varied use of the "a tree falls in a forest and there's no one around, does it make noise" phrase as a metaphor. Because we didn't have enough disconnected metaphors in this song yet. This part is boring but at least the music builds and Ben Platt sings it like it means something.

Then we finish with our awful chorus again.

Aside from the second half of the first verse, everything in this song is either an awkward metaphor or a generic "This is what happens to people" statement. So little of it feels real or true. It certainly doesn't feel like something anybody would ever say, it feels like Pasek and Paul made a list of metaphors and cliches that had to do with feeling isolated and said, "Sure, yeah, let's just make it rhyme and sing that." It tells us so little about the character.

Compare this to "Michael in the Bathroom," one of my all-time favorite songs. Immediately, from line one, we are in the character's mind and viewpoint. No metaphors to climb over, no generalizations to weed through. We learn in two lines what it takes Pasek and Paul four minutes to kinda sorta get around to.

These lyrics are so simple but so honest. Incidentally, this chorus would be a much better place to insert PasekPaul's awkward "Will I ever be more than I've always been?" line -- like look at how much better it fits with the ending of chorus one: "I'm just Michael who you don't know / Michael flying solo / Michael in the bathroom by himself." We get an actual sense of how Michael's (deliberate self-) isolation feeds into the grander view of himself as a person capable of doing and being things. He's just "Michael who you don't know." Will he ever be more than that? That thought works there.

The second verse, just like in "Waving Through a Window," is about how things used to be okay and now things aren't. But compare them! One is vague and generic and applied to the whole human race ("We start with stars in our eyes, we start believing that we belong") while the other is clearly about this one individual person while still inviting us into the feeling ("Memories get erased and I'll get replaced with a newer, cooler version of me").

The penultimate line is, "All you know about me is my name." That's true about Evan Hansen. But I'm pretty sure Michael and I are best friends now.

Top 10 Songs From Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Season 2)

Back in February I wrote a blog post about my top 10 songs from the first season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Originally I was going to combine both seasons into one blog post, but I hadn't listened to season two enough for it to really wow me yet, so I decided to hold off on that one until I got a few more plays in. Well, it totally worked, because the 10 songs I have here are now some of my all-time favorites now that I've really gotten to know them. A few wouldn't even have been in my top half of songs from the show two months ago. So let's dive right in, shall we?

(Note, first of all, that this is chock full of season two spoilers, and, secondly, that two of these songs have curse words in the title. One is uncensored. One is censored in the official song name but it's obvious what it is.)

10. Friendtopia

Not only is this a fun song to listen to, but I like the unexpected path it takes. It's a Spice Girls-style song about friendship, but then there's this weird second half of it which is that it's about using female friendship to literally take over the world. So we get this weirdly dark song that's half about being besties and half about world domination, and I love that bizarre combination. (One of the YouTube comments on the video is, "What a... weirdly specific concept for a satire song.") I think it's probably all summed up in what I'd choose for the best line:

"We're gonna braid each other's hair, then cut each other's braids, connect the braids to build a rope to hang all of Congress."



9. Let's Have Intercourse

This song would've been higher up a few months ago, and even though it's slid down a bit I still really enjoy it. The context is a very cold, unpleasant, arrogant character who has, much to his dismay, suddenly become interested in Rebecca and decides they should sleep together so he can get her out of his system and move on. So he sings this song. The music is romantic and sensual, while the words are anything but, as he clearly sees this as sort of an embarrassing chore. But the music is so pretty! I'm such a sucker for songs where the music and lyrics are an amusing mismatch, and this totally hits that. (One of the YouTube comments points out this is an Ed Sheeran style parody, which may very well be right. I don't listen to enough Ed Sheeran to know for sure.)

Best line: "Let's get this over with so I can focus on other tasks."



8. What a Rush to Be a Bride

Some songs have an extra bit of humor that come out of being just... really, really unexpected. This is one of those. Rebecca's in the midst of planning her wedding and gushing with her best friend Paula over all the little pretty details, and then, abruptly... there's a screaming heavy metal song. It was completely unlike anything the show had done up until this point, it was completely unlike the tone of the episode up until that moment, and it was brilliant. It started and Jacob and I pretty much just both stared at it laughing because we couldn't believe that was the direction they'd go. I'm not into screaming metal much, so it's here almost solely on the strength of that first appearance, but I love that they did this.

Best line: "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! If you rearrange the letters it spells 'veil.'"



7. So Maternal

Let me say right now that I don't have kids, never plan to have kids, and react strongly to those who think I will never know what true love is until I have kids... but I am in total sympathy with my mom friends who get all kinds of outside advice from people who don't know what they're talking about, and this song is a prime example of that. Rebecca offers to babysit Paula's elementary school child for a weekend and, in a burst of confidence, this song happens, contrasted with amazing clips of her cheerfully and obliviously failing at childcare. (The weekend ends with Rebecca taking the child to a nightclub and losing him there, so... yeah, she comes down to earth on this eventually.)

Best line: "You know, I think I just instinctively 'get' how to be a mom, and that sets me apart from other 'mothers.'"



6. We'll Never Have Problems Again

This, right here, encompasses a lot of Rebecca's problems. She is just stuck on the idea that a relationship is going to fix everything that's wrong with her, and while most of the people around her realize that, nope, that's not true, she just ignores them and sings a cheery disco song. This song is insanely catchy and the first one on the list where it was really difficult to choose a single favorite line because so many of them are great. It's such a cleverly written song of naivete, and I love it.

Best line: "Do you remember back when we had problems? Oh, man, that was annoying."



5. (Tell Me I'm Okay) Patrick

The YouTube comments are on point with these songs as I read through them. One user says, "How can something be so completely over the top and also so incredibly true to life? I guess that's what makes it so funny.  The tears are in the margins." Oh my gosh, so true. In this song, Rebecca has struck up a casual acquaintanceship with package delivery man Patrick, who has brought wedding item after wedding item to Rebecca's door and listened as she vented about the stress of wedding planning. Here she falls apart, begging someone she doesn't know for validation that she's not as completely broken as she feels like it is. The song is funny (Seth Green plays Patrick with a stoic calm that really sells it) but on that final, "Am I okay?" you really see the desperation in Rebecca's eyes, that she feels like she is losing her mind and can't quite find her way back. I relate. Hard.

Best line: "I think I'm fine, Patrick, but I'm only like ... 43% sure."



4. Rebecca's Reprise

AAAAHHHH THE FEELS

OK, so this one is high on my list for contextual reasons. By itself, it doesn't mean much to anyone. But let me try to explain why this hits so hard. It's a reprise medley of four previously sung songs, sung here by Rebecca on the morning of her wedding (which we know, know, know cannot possibly end well). The first two songs were originally incredibly dark moments in her life, moments when she saw herself at her worst. The third is a song not even sung by her originally, it was sung by another character about his love for his daughter, but here she co-opts it because for the first time she feels like maybe her parents will love her because she will finally be a successful married woman. And then she ends with one of the songs from earlier in the list: "I'll never have problems again." It hurts seeing how she is so hopeful that she will climb out of her self-loathing and her deep-seated issues through this relationship, and when it all falls apart at the end (as we know deep down it must because neither she nor Josh are ready for this), a second listen to this song is even more heartbreaking. One of the most beautifully tragic moments in the whole show.



3. It Was a S*** Show

I MISS YOU, SANTINO FONTANA! My favorite character is gone from the show, but of course his last couple songs are in my top 10. This one is his official goodbye song to Rebecca, acknowledging that they were really, really bad together, that they would always bring out the worst in each other. And he pulls zero punches, as you can see just from the title of the song. He nearly gives in at the end, since they really do love each other, but that's not enough when they both have serious issues to work through and can't do that together. It hits that funny-but-sad note that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is great at, and it's a fitting goodbye to Greg.

Best line: "And when you say that I should stay that's exactly when I should split."



2. We Tapped That Ass

This song quickly became one of my guilty pleasure favorites. In this song, the "memory spirits" of Rebecca's past lovers are haunting her house and reminding her (with dozens of classless euphemisms) of all the sex they had. Every place in her home is haunted. The song is crude, but it's crude purposefully -- it matches the unhappiness with herself she feels for having lost not one, but two guys she thought she had a future with, and demonstrates how everything is now just a gross reminder of how willingly she gave herself to them when they then left her. The cheerfulness of the two men singing is what sells it, though it's important to note that thy are both much kinder to her than this in real life -- this is, after all, Rebecca's mind painting them as gleefully comparing sexual experiences. The glibness of the song is a hint at how Rebecca sees her past mistakes, rather than a genuine endorsement of sex as a series of conquests. And it's also super catchy and fun.



1. The Math of Love Triangles

I knew back when I started compiling this list that this would have to be at the top of it. Since I first saw it, it's been one of my favorites, a brilliant send-up of Marilyn Monroe (especially in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and the general trope of dumb women being sexy. Here, Rebecca's dream sequence features a group of men earnestly trying to teach her about triangles, but as she responds with baby talk and misunderstanding of what they're saying, they get increasingly frustrated. This was another one where it was really difficult to choose a favorite line, as there were so many... but in the end, I think I have to go with this amazing exchange:

"Is this a triangle?"
"No, that's a shoe."
"Is this a triangle?"
"No, that's you."
"So I'm a triangle?"
"What? No."
"1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 3, go!"


Honorable Mentions: You're My Best Friend (And I Know I'm Not Yours), Thought Bubbles, Santa Ana Winds, Ping Pong Girl, Greg's Drinking Song, You Go First

Other friends watching the show... What's your favorite performance of season two? 

Musical Spotlight: Parade

It's musical spotlight time! Sometimes I have trouble thinking of what to include, but for whatever reason, this time I had the sudden thought, "Obviously I should write about Parade," and then it just seemed like the obvious choice, so here I am.

Parade was the first Jason Robert Brown musical I ever fell in love with, though my friend Sarah had tried in vain to get me into The Last 5 Years. I was on a cast recording kick. I'd listened to everything our local library had to offer (lots of Andrew Lloyd Webber) and wanted to branch out, so I borrowed albums one at a time through interlibrary loan. I'd look up the show synopsis if it wasn't printed in the liner notes and follow along with the songs to get a sense of how they fit into the context of the show. I discovered quite a few of my favorites this way.

This musical is a dark dramatization of the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager living in Georgia in 1913. He was convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl who worked in his factory and was given the death penalty. The trial was a media sensation and served to strengthen antisemitic feelings in the state. After the trial closed, the governor of Georgia reviewed all the testimony from the trial and changed Frank's sentence to life in prison, only for Frank to be kidnapped and hanged by a lynching party who feel justice was not served.

This was JRB's second major musical and his Broadway debut, which won the Tony Award for Best Score but, like way too many of his shows, it closed pretty quickly, after only two months. It's since gained a lot of respect in the theater community. Its most recent major showing was a one-night Lincoln Center concert starring Jeremy Jordan and Laura Benanti as the Franks.

Here are my five favorite songs from the show, in order of appearance! All come from the original Broadway cast recording, which you should immediately purchase if you like these.

1. The Old Red Hills of Home

This song opens the show and gives us a strong sense of location. It begins with a young Georgia soldier about to go fight in the American Civil War, and then flashes forward to 1913, when that same soldier is now a one-legged veteran participating in the Confederate Memorial Day parade. The song is full of love for the state and passionate defense of it. While at the beginning it is powerful and inspirational, as the show goes on, we begin to see that the rush to defend Georgia at all costs is fueling some of the antisemitic views throughout.



2. How Can I Call This Home?

Shortly after that passionate song about life in Georgia, we get this song, introducing us to Leo Frank. He's married a Georgia girl and moved here from Brooklyn, but he just isn't comfortable here and he knows he never will be. While this song encompasses a lot of different reasons Leo feels he can't make this his home, I've always found a connection to it through being an introvert living among extroverts at various points in my life. As a whole, the song is a mournful, frustrated tune about feeling constantly like an outcast and wishing you could be somewhere where you wouldn't feel like that.



3. It Don't Make Sense

After 13-year-old Mary Phagan is found dead, this heartbreaking song is sung at her funeral. With a dark, ominous version of "There Is a Fountain" playing in the background, Mary's friends sing about their memories of their friend, and Mary's sometime-boyfriend ends his tribute with a furious diatribe against whoever did this to her. The song is haunting and sad in capturing the senselessness of such a horrible act and how it impacts all the people Mary knew.



4. Come Up to My Office

This song is not part of the linear plot, but a dark fantasy sequence taken from the testimony of the factory girls who falsely testify that Leo looked at Mary "funny." As they give their testimony, Leo "becomes the lecherous seducer of their testimony" (as the Wikipedia summary puts it), singing an ominous, creepy song seducing the girls up to his office with food and "things [she] might like to see." It's an eerie look into how the people now perceive Leo, and as the music builds, you can almost hear the townspeople's fear building as well.



5. All the Wasted Time


One of Brown's all-time best love songs (and he's done some quite good ones), this one focuses on the relationship between Leo and his wife Lucille. Throughout the show, they are strange and distant toward each other, but as Leo finds himself in dire need, the two end up falling in love all over again. In this scene, they lament that it took this long for the two of them to truly discover each other. It's a lovely song, performed here by the original stars Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello.




Those are my favorite songs from Parade! Share your own favorites, add your thoughts on the songs I shared here, or suggest the next Musical Spotlight blog I should write!

The 5 Most Depressing Disney Songs

Disney songs are known for being inspirational like "When You Wish Upon a Star" or fun and cute like "Hakuna Matata"... they're not usually known for being depressing. But every so often, there'll be a Disney song that will just encompass a hopeless, dark worldview. Here are five that I think perfectly showcase the darker side of Disney.

5. "When She Loved Me" from Toy Story 2

While Disney has plenty of songs about sad situations, a lot of them lean toward the hopeful -- songs like "Goodbye May Seem Forever" from The Fox and the Hound and "Someone's Waiting for You" from The Rescuers are both in the middle of dark scenes, but both of them focus less on the horribleness of the situation and more on hoping for something better or dealing with the pain. "When She Loved Me" is just all, "NOW EVERYTHING IS THE WORST." And getting Sarah McLachlan to sing this song was just perfect, because nobody can make a song horrifically sad like Sarah McLachlan.

Most depressing lyrics:
So the years went by, I stayed the same
But she began to drift away, I was left alone
Still I waited for the day, when she’d say "I will always love you."

4. "Very Good Advice" from Alice in Wonderland

The Disney version of Alice in Wonderland is less whimsical adventure and more trippy nightmare, but even when it's creepy it's usually not sad... until this moment. Alice's lament at her inability to do the right thing is a heartbreaking expression of self-destruction. It's a particularly weird song to have in the middle of this movie. Nothing like stopping your story of a feisty and independent young girl exploring a strange world to have her suddenly lament that she is too fundamentally broken to do the right thing. And it's not like the consequences of this have been all that bad thus far -- if I recall the movie's sequence correctly, she hasn't even yet encountered the queen who kills people on a whim -- so this is all about Alice's inner turmoil and self-loathing. Sheesh, Disney.

Most depressing lyrics:
Well I went along my merry way
And I never stopped to reason
I should have know there'd be a price to pay
Someday...someday

3. "I Will Go Sailing No More" from Toy Story

While "When She Loved Me" might have been sadder, this one is more depressing because it's about something lost internally, not externally. This is the song of Buzz's existential crisis, where his entire concept of who he is has been shattered to pieces. He thought he had a big huge purpose in life only to discover that his sole purpose is being a children's toy. This does try to put in the characteristic Disney optimism, but then that falls apart as well, and the final, "Clearly, I will go sailing no more" is all about Buzz defeatedly accepting his fate, not because he has chosen to, but because he's beaten down and has no will to resist anymore.

Most depressing lyrics:
All the things I thought I'd be
All the brave things I've done
Vanish like a snowflake
With the rising of the sun

2. "Home Sweet Home" from Lady and the Tramp

If you don't recognize the name of this song, that's because it has no lyrics. This is the song all the dogs howl at the pound before Lady shows up and Peggy Lee sings jazzy tunes at her. This is the song that serves no purpose except to remind us how freaking miserable everything is in here. And then the following scene emphasizes over and over again that, yeah, most of these dogs are probably going to die, and the ones that don't today are living in constant fear of their lives. I don't even like dogs or dog movies, and I still find this one incredibly uncomfortable.

1. "No Way Out" from Brother Bear

This just sounds like a bland little song of regret until you listen to the lyrics and realize how completely hopeless they are. Phil Collins tries to toss in a note of hope at the very end of the chorus when he says, "I will find another way, I will face another day," but, uh, nope, you can't fool us, you've just spent the whole song telling us there is no way (for Pete's sake, you even titled your song about it) and that there is no freedom for you. All the hopelessness in the song makes that attempt at optimism just feel like desperately grasping at straws, and I don't buy it for a second. It's not noble, it's not inspirational, it's just line after line of constant wallowing in despair.

Most depressing lyrics:
Well, all of it except for the last 2 lines. But I guess I'd have to go with this...

There's no way out of this dark place
No hope, no future
I know I can't be free

Well, those are my picks. What do you think are the most depressing Disney songs of all time? And for any of you about to say "Let It Go," you're wrong. :-P

Musical Spotlight: 1776

It was about time for me to tackle another musical spotlight blog, but I couldn't decide what to go for next. I like a lot of musicals, and none were speaking to me especially these days, so I decided to let history decide. On this day in 1969, the musical 1776 opened on Broadway, starring William Daniels, Howard Da Silva, Ken Howard, and Betty Buckley (in her Broadway debut). The book is by Peter Stone, the music and lyrics are by Sherman Edwards.

I've sincerely enjoyed this show for a very long time. I grew up watching the movie version (which preserves many of the original Broadway cast members). It's a musical version of how the Declaration of Independence was written and signed, and it's known for being fairly decent in terms of accuracy. There are definitely a few things that got rearranged, played up, or created entirely for dramatic effect, but a great deal of research went into it and much of the dialogue is inspired by or directly taken from letters written by those involved.

It's a funny, fascinating show that seems more like a play with music than a musical. In fact, the show holds the record for the longest stretch between songs in a musical -- nearly thirty minutes pass between "The Lees of Old Virginia" and "But Mr. Adams." I think the songs bring a lightness to the show that wouldn't have been the case otherwise. There's a lot of almost-cynicism in the story, and without the songs it would have been very easy for that to overshadow everything.

So since the songs are important for the show, here are my five favorites, in order of show appearance!

1. The Lees of Old Virginia

There's no good clip of this from the movie, so I'll have to settle for the movie soundtrack. At this point in the musical, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin want to propose independence, but Adams is extremely unpopular in Congress and he knows if he suggests it it'll never get discussed at all. They approach Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, and ask him if he'd be willing to. He enthusiastically agrees to go get authorization to do so, and on his way out he sings this fun song about how his family heritage is sure to get him the support he needs.



2. But, Mr. Adams

After Lee proposes a vote on independence, the vote is split, and the "pro" group is given the opportunity to write up a declaration explaining the reasons for choosing independence, in the hopes of winning over the other side. In this song, the declaration committee tries to decide who should write the declaration. They all have their different reasons they shouldn't -- especially Thomas Jefferson, as he has planned a visit to his wife, whom he hasn't seen for six months. The song is a silly back-and-forth between Adams, pressuring each member of the committee in turn, and the rest, protesting that they shouldn't be the one to do it.



3. Mama Look Sharp

One of my favorite songs from any show, this is a suddenly dark song in the middle of a fairly lighthearted story. A few of the messenger boys are sitting around chatting about what it would be like to be in the war and sharing stories of their friends and family members who have been. That yields this haunting tune sung from the point of view of a boy who is dying on the battlefield, and his mother is searching for his body.



4. The Egg

As Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson eagerly wait to find out whether the Declaration of Independence will be accepted by Congress, they sing about the excitement of forming a new nation and debate what bird would best represent it by being the national bird -- Adams votes for the eagle, Jefferson for the dove, and Franklin for the turkey (which he did advocate for in real life). This song is back to the show's more lighthearted tone, and it's great fun.



5. Molasses to Rum

The part of the show that takes the most liberties with history for dramatic effect is this bit toward the end, where the vote for or against independence hinges on a clause in the Declaration that denounces slavery. This leads to a dramatic walkout of every delegate from the South, who refuse to sign unless it is removed. While this passage was indeed removed from the final engrossed copy of the Declaration and it is said that two of the states opposed it, it was much less dramatic than this -- independence had already been voted in by the time this debate happened, so it was simply the wording being challenged, not the cause of independence itself.

However, that doesn't make this song any less interesting. The key player for the South in the musical version is South Carolina delegate Edward Rutledge, who in this song points out the North's complicity in the slave trade and accuses them of hypocrisy. It's a dark, unsettling tune, performed here on the movie's soundtrack by five-time Tony nominee John Cullum.


And that's 1776! I highly recommend the movie version and any of the recordings.

Also, if you have a movie you'd be interested in hearing my take on for a Musical Spotlight post, let me know! I like a lot of musicals, so it's hard for me to narrow down my choices sometime.

Musical Spotlight: Into the Woods

With the official movie version coming out in theaters at the end of this month, I figured it would be appropriate to a musical spotlight on this iconic musical by Stephen Sondheim.

The show made its Broadway debut in 1987 and ran until 1989, closing after 765 performances. The show was nominated for ten Tonys in its original run and won three of them (Best Score, Best Book, and Best Actress for Joanna Gleason as the Baker's Wife).

The musical has one of my very favorite stories. It begins as a mash-up of several different fairy tales all connected to each other, including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel. There are also some lesser-known fairy tales involved, most notably one of a baker and his wife who must break a witch's spell to have a baby. (The Baker, the Baker's Wife, and the Witch are all prominent characters in the musical.) By the end of the first act, the stories have all finished with the happy endings we all know, and everything seems to be fine.

In the second act, however, everything goes awry. The giant that Jack killed has a wife who is out for vengeance, and she starts tearing apart the idyllic world of happily ever after endings. Everybody's fulfilled wishes slowly unravel, and the show gets much darker, deconstructing the original stories and delving into themes of death, infidelity, fear, and loss of innocence. While the show does end on a hopeful note, with evil being defeated again, the world has changed significantly, and the remaining characters have changed significantly as well. It's a brilliant takedown of fairy tale endings and how they don't reflect reality.

I'm cautiously hopeful about the new movie. Some casting choices have me a little worried, and I've heard some unsettling rumors that they're "Disneyfying" the very bits that were meant to "unDisneyfy" the fairy tales in the first place. But in the meantime, let's just focus on how great the songs are to begin with!

1. I Know Things Now

Movie casting choice that scares me #1: casting Little Red and Jack as actual children. As you can see in this song and the next one, they both have songs reflecting on their experiences that serve pretty clearly as fairly mature coming-of-age songs, especially in regards to possibly sexual meanings. Either way, they're definitely about losing innocence. Little Red's story in particular seems to portray the Wolf as a sexual predator, and her final thoughts reflect her new concerns that she is not immune to danger and that she isn't entirely comfortable with the new knowledge she's acquired through this experience (as evidenced by the final lines: "Isn't it nice to know a lot? ...And a little bit not"). In fact, the first girl cast as Little Red left because her parents felt precisely this -- that this song had undertones far too mature for an elementary-school child to be singing.

Nevertheless, it's a great song, and it does convey well how new experiences can leave us wiser but not necessarily happier.



2. Giants in the Sky

While Jack's story has fewer overtly sexual overtones than Little Red, his song here parallels hers in many ways. His story is a little less dangerous, but it also reflects his new knowledge and how it has changed him and how he's not entirely sure about it yet ("You think of all of the things you've seen / And you wish that you could live in between / And you're back again, only different than before"). I really love this song, with its combination of excitement at the new discoveries and wistful memories of who he was before, with the knowledge that he can never truly go back.




3. Agony

Here's something a little lighter for you. This song is sung between the two prince brothers who are in love with Cinderella and Rapunzel and frustrated that they can't seem to catch them -- both literally and figuratively. The two are shallow and even competitive in their sorrow ("Agony! Far more painful than yours"). It's a very funny song in the first act that has interesting repercussions in the second, and it's one of my all-time favorite musical theater duos.



4. No One Is Alone

Skipping through most of the second act to avoid too many spoilers, I thought this would be a good one to share from act two. It's near the end, and the two children have confessed that they feel very lost, alone, and scared in this new, darker world. The adults comfort them with this song, which reminds them that nobody is ever truly alone. It's really a beautiful song with deceptively simple lyrics that convey a much deeper meaning.




5. Children Will Listen


This song closes out the show (sung here in concert by Bernadette Peters, who played the Witch on Broadway originally). In the show, it's given as a piece of advice to those raising children in the aftermath of the shattered fairy tales, but given that the entire show is based on stories we tell to children, it clearly has a larger meaning to it. "Careful the things you say / Children will listen / Careful the things you do / Children will see and learn." It's a question of the stories we choose to tell and the stories and messages they communicate to the others. Like No One Is Alone, this song brings up our connectedness as humans, how the things we say and do will affect others, even when we don't think about it.

Plus, the song is just so pretty.



There are a lot of other really great songs in this unique musical, and my feelings toward the upcoming movie version are... well, to quote Little Red: "It made me feel excited... well, excited and scared."

Are you a fan of Into the Woods? How are you feeling about the movie? What other fairy tales would be interesting turned into a darker musical version of themselves?

Top Twelve Villain Showtunes

This is another blog requested on my Ask.fm page (remember, if you have something you want me to blog about, submit it there and I'll get to it eventually!). I'm glad I finally get to do this one, I've been sorting through it for awhile:

What are your top ten villain songs from movies/musicals?

This is tough. Even if it was just "top villain songs from Disney movies/musicals," it'd be tough. Because musicals are just awesome at creating awesome songs for their bad guys -- funny, scary, sad, and everything in between.

Looking through my list of musicals, I managed to find 44 villain songs I really enjoy, and managed to whittle that down, eventually to 12... and then I absolutely could not pick two of those twelve to throw out. So I'm cheating and allowing myself two extra songs.

In alphabetical order of song name are my picks and why:

"Be Prepared" (The Lion King)

I wrote about my love for this song back in September of last year on my blog post about great Disney song sung by male characters. I haven't actually see the stage production, but it's really hard to imagine it could be better than this. The tremendous animation REALLY enforces the ominous tone of the song, which is spectacular all by itself. I honestly think this song might be like 60% of the reason I like The Lion King so much. Definitely one of my all-time favorites.

"Cell Block Tango" (Chicago)

Like the rest of this show, this is a combination of dark and funny. When the characters are telling their stories, there's definitely a very morbid sense of humor running throughout, but every time they return to the explosion of rage in the chorus, it gives me chills. Such a simple song, but so intense.

"Dentist!" (Little Shop of Horrors)

Oh, man, narrowing down a song from this show was so difficult. I was stuck for quite a long time between this, "Feed Me" and "Suppertime," all of which are tremendous... but in the end I went with this. I really like songs that mix cheerful and dark elements, and this fits the bill perfectly. The dentist seems so happy about having found a career that lets him just hurt people all the time. (My poor sister Elizabeth watched this movie the night before she had her wisdom teeth taken out -- that may not have been the best choice!)

"Do the Necronomicon" (The Evil Dead: The Musical)

I got a chance to see this show live this October, and it was one of the most fun theatrical experiences I've ever had. In this song, the main characters have just summoned a horde of demons... who appear and instantly do a choreographed dance to honor the Necronomicon (despite the fact that most of them are annoyed they can't start killing people until they finish the dance). It's silly and fun and easily belongs in this list of favorites.

"Everybody's Got the Right" (Assassins)

This song both opens and closes the show, but I particularly like the shorter version at the end. I find this a really creepy villain song (and I've written about it before). The show focuses on several famous presidential assassins or attempted assassins, and this song at the end has each one justifying their actions -- they were reaching for their dreams, they were trying to make a difference in the world, they hope to inspire others to make their own mark, throughout whatever means possible. It's one of the most terrifying inspirational songs I've ever heard.

"Everything You Ever" (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog)

(Definite spoilers here, so if you missed out on this, go find it somewhere, watch all 45 minutes, and then come back and read this.)

This was another show I had a lot of trouble choosing a song for. It's all ABOUT villainy, so it's no surprise that a lot of the songs work. Do I go with the angry "Brave New Day"? The you-think-he's-a-hero-but-he's-really-the-villain "Everyone's a Hero"? In the end, I chose this song, which closes out the story with Dr. Horrible getting everything he has been working toward, reaching the upper tiers of supervillains... but finding it it's not what he thought it would be. Man, just rewatching this breaks me a little. This may be due for a rewatch soon.

"A Little Priest" (Sweeney Todd)

Choosing between this and "Epiphany" from this show was tough, but in the end I went with this, one of Sondheim's most enduring numbers. It suffers a bit from Cole Porter Syndrome (i.e., when a song has like 500 verses because the songwriter is just having TOO much fun with his clever wordplay) but the lyrics are clever and fun, and seeing the two giggle for so long about baking people into pies is both morbid and entertaining.

"Meant to Be Yours" (Heathers)

The first one I don't have a performance video for, since, well, there aren't any for this song. I wrote about this only about a month and a half ago in my musical spotlight on Heathers, so I'm just going to repost what I said about it then:

"Veronica has decided she doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore, and she tells J.D. so in no uncertain terms. He threatens her, only to come back and sing this song to her, where he describes his plan for killing everyone in the school at once in the hopes of making some sort of statement about society and says he needs her to be there with him. When he opens the door to her room, he finds her (supposedly) dead body, sings his love for her, but then vows to carry on the work they started.

I find the music to this song just fascinating to listen to. It does an awesome job of switching between J.D.'s tender, emotional proclamations of love and his clearly unhinged fantasies of violence. It does everything it needs to to build the tension of his character toward the end of the show."

"No Good Deed" (Wicked)

Another one there's no good live performance of, unfortunately, but it's really a fantastic villain song -- it isn't just a evil character singing about their evil plans, but it's actually almost more about the concept of villainy (as is a lot of this show). Elphaba has been trying her whole life to do the right thing and it keeps backfiring on her, so here she decides to just give up trying to be right and just do whatever she wants. It's a painful, furious cry of pain and injustice.

"The Phantom of the Opera" (The Phantom of the Opera)

You can't compile a "villain showtunes" list and leave this one off. It's so iconic, especially those opening notes. This is one of those shows that no matter how many times I see it, it still retains its magic for me, and this is one of the most magical moments. Is it ludicrous that the candles rise up out of the water in his underground lake? Yes. But it's also so much fun :-)

"Stars" (Les Miserables)

Dang it, Russell Crowe, you very nearly ruined this song for me. But Philip Quast's marvelous performance can bring it back. I find Javert easily the most interesting character in this musical, and this is the first time we hear his inner monologue and see a side of him that's not just "he's the antagonist because he's supposed to be." This song brings out his rigid, inflexible moral guidelines that drive his whole life -- and that he's not just "evil to be evil." He is firmly convinced he's on "the path of the Lord." It fleshes out a character who could very well just have been a nameless, motivation-less villain and makes him so much more.

"Uninvited" (Sleeping Beauty Wakes)

I couldn't leave this one out! This is not only one of my favorite villain showtunes, it's one of my favorite showtunes, period, from one of my favorite musicals. It's a fun angry song sung from the Maleficent character's point of view in the Sleeping Beauty story. She's so snarky and annoyed in the verses, and then chorus just bursts out in extreme frustration... and this is one of the MOST fun songs to sing along with.

So that's my list. What are your favorite villain songs from movies or musicals? Or just who are your favorite villains?

Let's Just Watch Musical Clips Today, K?

Whooo, today is a tough day and I forgot to write a blog ahead of time. So here, have a link to my YouTube collection of songs from musical movies. YouTube had just lifted the "200 videos only per playlist" restriction when I put this together, so I have something like 1600 clips here.

While you can watch all the clips in order from the link I gave you (because you KNOW you want to watch 1600 musical numbers today), anyone who wants to randomize them as I usually do can use this site, which allows you to put in my YouTube username (it's purplecow17) and then choose the "Musicals Win Everything" playlist to get a randomized version of the playlist I have.

See you guys on Friday, when my new snark series gets started.

Musical Spotlight: Heathers

Guys, I can't stop listening to this musical. I love it so so so much. I haven't fallen in love with a musical this hard since... gosh, I don't even know. Sleeping Beauty Wakes, maybe. Of course, it did help that I got chance to see a bootleg of the off-Broadway show. I'm pretty sure I would have liked a lot of this music anyway, but hearing everything in context was fantastic.

The songs were written by Laurence O'Keefe (Legally Blonde, Bat Boy) and Kevin Murphy (Reefer Madness), all of which are musicals I love a bunch, so I was thoroughly expecting to enjoy this, but I had no idea that I was going to love it this much.

I've been realizing over the last year that the things that connect with me most deeply emotionally are often things that tackle deep issues with a bit of a snarky or cynical touch. (One of these days I'm going to write a blog about that.) Heathers is definitely one of those. It matches up with the tone of the original movie really well (which I also recently watched and loved), mixing the serious with the darkly absurd... though I'd say the musical has more moments of surprising sincerity than the movie does.

This post will definitely have spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie or the musical and don't want spoilers... go watch the movie (it's on Netflix) and then come back and read this post. Go. Go now.

The plot centers around a girl named Veronica who is part of the cool clique in her high school (she is the only one there not named Heather, and the only one who feels qualms about being mean to the uncool kids) but ends up getting romantically involved with a clearly mentally disturbed bad boy named J.D. Together, the two start killing off the cool kids and passing the deaths off as suicides.

It was really really really really difficult to choose just five favorite songs from this show. Like... a lot. I wanted to include every single one of them. But I managed to stick to just the five.

As a heads up for my more easily-bothered readers, songs with * have cursing in them (Which is most of the songs in the show). Also, these are lyric videos, so even though they look like they have all the same album art going on, there is something to look at when you play them.

In chronological order:

*1. Fight for Me
This is Veronica's first encounter with J.D., when he gets into a fist fight with one of the jerk jocks at school... and she's kind of into that and sings a whole song about it. This was also the first song from the musical I really fell in love with. It's such an unusual love song, and I think that's what really draws me to it. It was also when I discovered I loved Barrett Wilbert Weed's voice (the girl who plays Veronica). It's so interesting to listen to.



*2. Dead Girl Walking
I've already written a bit about this song on my "Girl Power!" showtunes mix from last month, and it actually was the one that inspired the mix in the first place. While, er,  no, I don't think it's a great idea to drunkenly climb into a guy's bedroom through the window in the middle night, wake him up, and demand he sleep with you the way Veronica does here, the music is fantastic and rocky and it is a ton of fun to sing along with. Just listening to this song always makes me feel more energized.

(I played this one time on Plug.dj with one of my friends who listens primarily to metal and is not generally a showtunes person, and when it was done he said he kinda liked it.)



3. Lifeboat
And now we get into a couple of the more serious songs. In this one, one of the Heathers (whose best friend and boyfriend have both died at this point) admits that she's been very depressed recently, and sings this short, very sad song about the pressure of living up to everyone else's standards, and she feels it's only a matter of time before everything falls apart and she's tossed. It's the first time we (and Veronica) see a glimpse of humanity from the cool kids, and while killing them up until this point has been shown as some sort of noble act of justice, suddenly it seems... not so much.



4. Kindergarten Boyfriend
So back when I was an especially emo high schooler who collected unrequited love showtunes and "no one will ever love me" songs, I would have been all over this song. Even though I am less emo these days, I still empathize very, very strongly with this character, one of the unpopular kids who has been picked on for years and years and years.

The character up until this point has been naively optimistic about the idea that maybe she won't be bullied so much this year and maybe the quarterback likes her, and this song captures the heartbreaking desire to hold onto hope while being crushed with the realization that the world is sometimes very ugly.


*5. Meant to Be Yours
As I was compiling this list, the above four were "must haves," but as I tried to decide what to round it out with, I realized I didn't have any songs from the guys in the show. Granted, this is a girl-heavy musical, but the guys have some awesome songs as well. So I decided on this one.

Veronica has decided she doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore, and she tells J.D. so in no uncertain terms. He threatens her, only to come back and sing this song to her, where he describes his plan for killing everyone in the school at once in the hopes of making some sort of statement about society and says he needs her to be there with him. When he opens the door to her room, he finds her (supposedly) dead body, sings his love for her, but then vows to carry on the work they started.

I find the music to this song just fascinating to listen to. It does an awesome job of switching between J.D.'s tender, emotional proclamations of love and his clearly unhinged fantasies of violence. It does everything it needs to to build the tension of his character toward the end of the show.



There are so many more incredible songs, so if you liked any of these, go buy the cast recording as a whole because IS AMAZING.

Showtunes Mix: Girl Power!

A few weeks ago a Facebook friend asked for suggestions of awesome girl power songs, and then this week I've been listening to the off-Broadway cast recording of Heathers a lot... so this seemed like a good time to throw together a girl power showtunes mix. These are songs about women kicking butt, taking charge of their own destinies, and not letting other people tell them what they can and cannot do. Over an hour and a half of my favorite "YEAAAAAAAAAAAH I RULE" songs.

© 2012 Lukasz Porwol, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

* = language warnings

1. My Strongest Suit (Aida)
Amneris may not be the typically "strong female character" in the show, as she's pretty flighty most of the time, but this song sure is confident and happy. And if fashion is your thing, then, hey, you go right ahead and own it.

2. Big, Blonde and Beautiful (Hairspray)
This whole show is full of awesome girl power songs, but this is by far my favorite. This character is completely comfortable with who she is and is not about to let anyone else tell her to change or make her feel bad about herself. It's one of my favorite songs to sing along with because it just makes me feel cool and awesome.

3. The Spark of Creation (Children of Eden)
In this musical version of the first eight chapters of Genesis, Eve finds herself wanting to explore and do more awesome things than Adam, who is comfortable enjoying the good life in Eden. This has long been one of my favorite showtunes, and it just makes me want to go out and make things and do things and see things.

4. Buenos Aires (Evita)
This fast-moving, fast-paced song is all about Eva looking forward to find a better place for herself in the big city, where she can really be a star. She's bursting with confidence and certainty that she's on her way to where she belongs.

5. What You Want (Legally Blonde)
OK, this one is kind of long and story-based... but it's super empowering. We follow Elle Woods from when she decides she's going to go to Harvard to win back her ex, all the way through her acceptance. When they finally announce she's in, there's such a triumphant sense of "YES! SHE MADE IT!" From me, anyway.

*6. Roxie (Chicago)
Aside from being an incredibly catchy and fun song, it's an incredibly satisfy one to belt out along with Roxie, who is completely determined to be a superstar and has no trouble visualizing how great it'll be when she makes it.

7. Naughty (Matilda)
Matilda is a truly awesome child character -- she trumps Annie and young Cosette any day. This song is all about changing your own story when the world around you seems to be in the bad guys' favor... and how sometimes that means bending the rules to even out the playing field, because "if you sit around and let them get on top, you might as well be saying you think that it's OK, and that's not right!"

8. I Want It All (High School Musical 3)
Sharpay may not be portrayed as a bad guy a lot of the time, but she is SO much more interesting than... whatsherface. Gabriella. That's her name. Sharpay is confident and bold and doesn't spend all her time sitting around sulking about how she has to do the right thing. And that definitely fits nicely into this mix.

*9. Bring It On (Sleeping Beauty Wakes)
This song has two amazing female characters, and I've given them each a song on this list. This one is the rebellious princess who is sick and tired of being sheltered her whole life and has finally decided she'd rather run away and live her life on her own, even if it means she ends up falling under the curse her parents live in fear of.

10. You Haven't Seen the Last of Me (Burlesque)
I was not crazy about this movie, but this song! This song is awesome. It's all about refusing to give up even when you're pushed to the breaking point, and Cher sings the heck out of it. It's one of those songs that makes me feel better on days when I'm feeling super overwhelmed.

11. Let It Go (Frozen)
Oh, sure, like I was going to leave this one off the list.

12. Get Out and Stay Out (9 to 5)
One of my favorite "I do not need a man" songs, where this character finally decides to get out of a toxic relationship and realizes she can stand on her own two feet. It just makes me want to stand up and yell, "YES!"

13. Don't Rain On My Parade (Funny Girl)
This original version by Barbra is still my favorite. She sounds so determined and ready to push people out of her way if they're trying to hold her back. Another great one to belt along with.

*14. Out Tonight (Rent)
This song has so much restless energy and makes me want to go out partying, even though in reality that's something I'd absolutely hate doing. :-) But it's a great song to get me hyped to go accomplish something.

*15. Dead Girl Walking (Heathers)
This is one of my new favorites. It's just so much fun to listen to and dance along with, and it was one of the main inspirations for me making this mix in the first place. I just kept listening to it and thinking, "I should collect other songs that kinda feel like this..."

*16. Cell Block Tango (Chicago)
I don't actually condone murdering sleazy boyfriends, but some days it's just awfully fun listening to this. It is more talking than singing, but the sung choruses just keep growing in intensity and getting even more fun to sing along with.

17. Uninvited (Sleeping Beauty Wakes)
This song sung from the POV of the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty is one of the most satisfying angry songs to sing along with. The lyrics are smart, the music is interesting, and, especially by the last chorus, it's just this awesome "Don't you DARE mess with me!" anthem.

18. I Will Prevail (Wonderland)
This section of my mix is pretty much all the "evil girl power" songs, as this one is also sung by the show's villainess -- the Mad Hatter, who is forcibly taking over Wonderland as the queen. It's one of my favorite songs in the show, especially when it gets to the huge power ballad-style chorus.

19. Defying Gravity (Wicked)
And obviously this one belonged on the list. Idina is the queen of girl power showtunes.

20. So Much Better (Legally Blonde)
There's nothing quite as "girl power" inspirational as suddenly finding out you've accomplished something you didn't think you could. In this song, Elle has found out that she's made it into a very exclusive internship program, and she realizes that she is much more than the relationship that has been defining her identity until this point.

21. You Can't Stop the Beat (Hairspray)
For me, there may not be any more empowering song than this. It's so joyous and triumphant and every person singing is so confident in themselves and the decisions they've made. I find it almost impossible to listen to this and not feel at least a little better -- it's definitely a go-to song for me when I'm feeling discouraged.

Download the whole mix here, and then go and buy the cast recordings for any of the songs you liked. :-)

Musical Spotlight: Fiddler on the Roof

I haven't written anything in this series in over a year, and when trying to figure out what I wanted to blog about today, I realized I was in a very Fiddler-esque mood.

Fiddler on the Roof is, after The Music Man, probably my favorite older musical. With music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, it made its Broadway debut in 1964, with Zero Mostel in the lead. In 1971 it was adapted into a movie starring Topol, who played the lead role on the London stage. The original Broadway production won nine Tony Awards and became the first musical in history to pass 3,000 performances in its run. It was the longest-running Broadway musical for almost 10 years (until Grease, which is not nearly as good).

I have been able to see this show live twice, once at a dinner theater in Illinois, and once on Broadway with Alfred Molina. Both productions were deeply moving, but that's less because of the special power of the individual productions themselves and more because the show itself is just very, very good.

Set in 1905 in Russia, it follows the story of a Jewish milkman named Tevye, his wife, and his five daughters (although only the oldest three are really relevant to the plot). As the world around him changes and his eldest daughters each push for non-traditional independence, he struggles to maintain his cultural and religious traditions. It's a beautiful, moving, often funny story about the difficulty of holding onto faith in the face of resistance, as well as the the question of when it's better to hold onto tradition and when it's best to abandon it.

After that extremely long intro, on to the music! Here are five of my favorite songs from the show. All clips are from the movie version, which is one of my all-time favorite musical movies.

1. Tradition
This is actually probably my least favorite of these five, but it so perfectly captures the feel and the theme of the show that I had to include it. In it, Tevye talks directly to the audience. He introduces us to his town, Anatevka, and its most important inhabitants. The song does a great job of portraying this small community held together so tightly through their shared traditions. It may be more monologue than singing, but it's a great show opener.

2. If I Were a Rich Man
This is probably one of the most well-known songs from the show, and it's definitely one of my favorites. It's a fun, upbeat song where Tevye daydreams about what it would be like if he were wealthy, instead of having to work hard all the time for just barely enough to feed his family. The gleeful painting of a world in which he never has to work and where all the men in town flock to him for advice makes me smile.

Like much of this show, its humor and cheerful is intermingled with wistfulness. I especially love the section where he dreams about being able to just sit and study the scriptures all the time. The song slows down and you get the sense that his wish isn't just about the fun of idleness, but that he finds his faith and all related things deeply meaningful, and having the time to pray and study scripture more is really one of the things he wants most.

3. Sabbath Prayer
Partly I had to choose this because this one is never anyone's favorite. This gorgeous little song is set up simply as a prayer they say over their family every Sabbath, and while I think it's one of the most lovely melodies in the entire show, it kind of slides under the radar. My favorite part is the very end, where the family is joined by the entire chorus singing the song as well. It really brings together again the idea of shared culture and shared tradition binding the community together.

4. Sunrise, Sunset
This song was one of my very very favorite showtunes for quite a few years. It takes place during Tevye's eldest daughter's wedding, and while at first listen it seems a bit bleak and dark for such a happy occasion, I absolutely love it. Very few of the songs in this show are all-happy or all-sad. Instead, every happy song has some mourning mixed in, and every sad song has some hope. In this case, as the older generation watches a young girl get married, they think of how quickly time passes and how this young couple will now have to make their way on their own, working together through both the good and the bad times.

And, of course, this song is followed by a great deal of happy celebratory dancing, so the wedding music isn't all sad.

5. Far From the Home I Love
Another sad song with a beautiful, beautiful melody. In this song, Tevye's second daughter is leaving home to join her soon-to-be husband, who has been exiled to Siberia for his political activism. In this song, she tries to explain to her father that she is making this choice freely, that even though she dearly loves her family and hates leaving them behind, her new home is wherever her husband is. While the song's bridge is more positive in tone musically, conveying the idea that she truly loves the idea of spending her life with this man, wherever he is, the song overall is one of saying goodbye, even knowing that she may never have a chance to see her family again. It's sad and beautiful and I love it.

If you are unfamiliar with this show, I highly recommend the movie. It's a very well-done adaptation and well worth the watch.