JUKEBOX: Musicals on the Pop Charts
While musical theatre has become a little more prominent in popular culture lately — the live TV production of Peter Pan and recent film adaptation of Into the Woods come to mind — one place where you’ll rarely hear a show tune these days is on Top 40 radio.
But that wasn’t always the case. Before the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll in the ’50s, musical theatre standards were often heard on popular radio, and many of the day’s star performers would routinely cross over between recorded music and stage or movie musicals. Yet even after jazz and standards were overtaken by rock, some Top 40 hits still came from a stage show — especially in the ’70s, when musical theatre began taking its cue from popular music. This week’s JUKEBOX offers a sampling of the most popular hits that came straight from musical theater.
1) “Till There Was You,” The Beatles (1963)
Who could forget the young, doe-eyed Paul McCartney singing this live on The Ed Sullivan Show? Originally from Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man (1957), the Beatles’ Latin-inspired arrangement of “Till There Was You” was part of their Hamburg shows as early as 1961, and appeared on the With the Beatles album in the UK and Meet the Beatles in the US. Though John Lennon hated this song (and would regularly make fun of Paul while he was singing it), its sweet innocence helped the band appear more acceptable to skeptical parents, who were pleased to hear a show tune among all that “yeah, yeah, yeah.” This song has long been a jazz and cabaret standard, but other popular artists, such as Judy Collins and Ray Charles, have also recorded it over the years.
2) “I’ve Got Rhythm,” The Happenings (1967)
The Happenings brought the ’30s into the ’60s with their groovy arrangement of George and Ira Gershwin’s standard from the musical Girl Crazy (1930). “I Got Rhythm” became one of the Happenings’ biggest hits, shooting to #3 on the US pop charts.
3) “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In,” The 5th Dimension (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL0KDzzEzMw
No musical ever tapped into the zeitgeist of the era more than Galt MacDermot’s 1967 musical Hair, a show about hippies, free love, and Vietnam opposition, complete with a live, onstage nude scene. The 5th Dimension’s medley of two of Hair’s most popular songs topped the charts for six weeks, was certified platinum, and is #66 on Billboard’s “Greatest Hits of All Time” list.
4) “Superstar,” Murray Head (1971)
Today, Andrew Lloyd Webber is most well-known for the grandiose musical spectacles of the ’80s and ’90s, but his earliest successes — Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita — were hard-edged rock operas, more like the Who’s Tommy than Phantom of the Opera. Superstar was recorded as a concept album a year before it came to the stage, featuring Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan as Jesus, Murray Head as Judas, and Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene. The album itself was a worldwide hit, topping the Billboard chart, and both Head’s “Superstar” and Elliman’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” charted as singles. Incidentally, Murray Head’s only other hit was also from a musical, a cover of “One Night in Bangkok,” from Chess.
5) “Day by Day,” Robin Lamont and the cast of Godspell (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWQEUzOACm4
“Day by Day” is the first song to hit the pop charts directly from the cast recording, sung by the actors who actually played the roles onstage (while Superstar took a similar path, the original album was made with rock singers, not musical theater actors). It spent 14 weeks on the charts, peaking at #13.
6) “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” Festival (1979)
The signature song from Evita (1976) — a rock opera about the life of Argentine first lady Eva Peron — has been covered dozens of times over the years, by performers such as Petula Clark, Tom Jones, and Olivia Newton-John, not to mention Madonna for the 1996 movie version. But no one covered it quite like the disco band Festival.
Do you have any favorite songs that came from musical theater? Tell us in the comments!
