The Lullaby of Broadway Edition

Summary

Hit Parade – "The Lullaby of Broadway Edition" (June 28, 2019)

Podcast: Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Host: Chris Molanphy (chart analyst, pop critic)
Theme: Broadway’s evolving (and often fraught) relationship with the Billboard charts across the decades — how show tunes became, and ceased to be, the language of popular music in America, and why Broadway and pop have grown apart (and together again) in surprising ways.

---

Overview

This episode is a sweeping survey of the intersections between Broadway musicals and mainstream American pop charts from the 1940s through the 2010s. Chris Molanphy examines how show tunes once dominated popular music, what led to their eclipse by rock 'n' roll and pop, and how Broadway keeps finding new ways to influence — and be influenced by — what’s trending in pop culture. It’s an energetic walk through music history, peppered with trivia, memorable samples, and lucid storytelling.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Golden Era of Broadway on the Charts (00:09–15:39)

• "Broadway Was Pop": In the mid-20th century, songs and cast albums from Broadway musicals were not just cultural milestones—they were the pop charts. For example, The Sound of Music (1960) original cast album spent 16 weeks at #1, the longest reign for a Broadway album.
• Multiple Versions as Hits: Songs like “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific (1949) landed in the Top 10 five times in one year, performed by different stars (Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, and more).
  • “A hit could be recorded by multiple acts, sometimes in a single year.” (08:00)
• Cast Albums as Status Symbols: In the LP era, cast albums from shows like My Fair Lady (1956) and Camelot (1961) weren’t just musical souvenirs—they were proof of middle-class aspiration.

Notable Segment:

• [04:55] Hair’s extraordinary 1969 run: “The week ending May 10, 1969, when the Broadway musical Hair not only held down the number one spot on the Billboard album chart, songs from the musical covered by then current pop acts simultaneously held down the top two spots on the Hot 100.”
• [12:42] My Fair Lady spends nearly 500 weeks on the Billboard album chart.

---

2. From Golden Era to the Rock Revolution (15:39–21:54)

• The Beatles & Broadway: Even as Beatlemania surged, Broadway’s chart presence lingered. The Beatles’ choice to perform “Till There Was You” on The Ed Sullivan Show (from The Music Man) nods to this heritage.
  • "The Fab Four had in their repertoire a cover of the song Till There Was Yous from The Music Man." (17:16)
• Rock Takes Over: The British Invasion and self-contained pop/rock acts like the Beatles and Bob Dylan begin to eclipse the songwriting factories (including Broadway and Tin Pan Alley).

---

3. Anomalies and Last Gasps: Hair and Crossover Hits (21:54–33:50)

• Hair‘s Chart Dominance: 1969 marks the last moment Broadway dominates both album and singles charts, through covers by the Fifth Dimension (“Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In”), The Cowsills, Oliver, Three Dog Night, and more—a unique, never-repeated convergence.
  • "The Fifth Dimension's 'Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In'... became one of only two songs that originated in stage musicals ever to top the Hot 100 after Louis Armstrong's 'Hello Dolly'." (24:15)
• Jesus Christ Superstar: Webber & Rice’s rock opera couldn’t get staged—so they release it as a concept album first (1970), which becomes a US #1 before any theatrical production.
  • “A stage show on two LPs without the stage.” (28:49)

---

4. The Split Widens: Broadway and Pop Drift Apart (33:50–49:48)

• Movie Adaptations Triumph, Cast Albums Flop: Grease (1978) Broadway cast album had minimal impact; its movie soundtrack was a #1 blockbuster. Ditto for Evita and Cats: big songs, but chart hits come from concept albums or star covers, not cast recordings.
  • "This divergence between the charts and the stage persisted into the 1980s..." (36:58)
• Jukebox Musical Era Dawns: The 2000s bring shows built from existing pop hits (e.g., Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys)—essentially reversing the flow.

Notable Quote:

• “Show tunes... would remain absent on the radio and on the Billboard charts... even songs that seemed to blanket TV talk shows and enter the pop canon would remain absent on the radio...” (33:25)

---

5. Outliers & Rebounds: Broadway's Never-Ending Impact

• Disney Revives the Form (in Disguise): Animated films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin (written by Broadway veterans Alan Menken & Howard Ashman) succeed as both show tunes and pop hits—but are accepted as "children's music".
  • “Americans in the 80s and 90s may have seemed allergic to flesh and blood humans breaking into song, but animated characters? That was no problem at all.” (41:56)
• Sampling & Interpolation: In the ’90s–2000s, hip hop and pop artists (Jay-Z, Gwen Stefani, Ariana Grande) sample Broadway for chart success (e.g., “Hard Knock Life,” “7 Rings”).

---

6. The 21st Century: Return, Reinvention, and Virality (49:48–end)

• Movie Musicals Come Roaring Back: Chicago (2002), Dreamgirls (2006), Mamma Mia! (2008), Les Misérables (2012) send soundtracks to the top of the charts and revive the genre on the screen.
• Original Broadway Cast Surge:
  • Book of Mormon (2011) cast album hits #3, highest since 1969 (Hair)
  • Hamilton (2015) redefines what's possible: #1 on Rap Albums, #3 on all genres, and inspires hit “mixtape” by pop stars.
    • "The Hamilton original cast album not only reached number three on the Billboard album chart, matching the peak of the Book of Mormon, it reached number one on the Rap Albums chart." (59:21)
• Viral Phenomena:
  • Be More Chill (2015), obscure and unheralded, becomes a viral sensation through streaming, and lands on Broadway thanks to Gen Z fans.
  • “This is, broadly speaking, the same way recent Hot 100 number ones like In My Feelings or Old Town Road got to the top of the charts.” (69:42)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cast Album Dominance:
  “A Broadway cast LP not only topped the album chart multiple weeks each year, in most of these years, a cast album was the country’s best seller.” – Chris Molanphy [14:55]

• On Hair’s Lasting Impact:
  “Hair remains the last Broadway cast album to top the Billboard album chart. Though no album…would ever replicate Hair precisely.” – Chris Molanphy [27:15]

• On Movie Musicals' Comeback:
  “Chicago reopened the floodgates to the movie musical, leading to a string of box office and often Oscar success stories, all with Billboard number one soundtrack albums.” [52:14]

• On Gen Z and Broadway:
  “Be More Chill is running at the Lyceum Theater as I speak. In short, a show with little critical acclaim produced in New Jersey is now on Broadway…it was teenagers who got it there. They shared the Be More Chill music online like crazy, the way they share memes and hashtags.” [69:43]

• Personal Touch:
  “Anna, age 14, and Thomas, age 12, are both self-proclaimed theater kids and indeed in their world, show tunes are the Hit Parade.” – Chris Molanphy [70:53]

---

Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:09–02:56 | Broadway’s peak: Sound of Music, Oklahoma, West Side Story; overview of cast albums as cultural event | | 04:45–15:39 | Broadway's album chart supremacy: Hair, My Fair Lady, Camelot, West Side Story LP juggernaut (54 weeks at #1) | | 17:00–19:29 | The Beatles & Louis Armstrong: Rock disrupts Broadway’s place in pop, but links linger | | 21:25–33:17 | Hair's cross-format success, the rise of the concept album with Jesus Christ Superstar | | 33:17–42:55 | After Hair: Broadway's absence from pop charts; movie adaptations fill the gap | | 42:55–44:46 | The Disney Renaissance as stealth Broadway and its pop chart dominance | | 46:08–49:48 | Rent and the rise of viral, youth-driven musical revivals; Hip hop samples Broadway | | 51:34–55:39 | Movie musical comeback: Chicago, Dreamgirls, jukebox musicals (Mamma Mia, Jersey Boys) | | 55:39–61:26 | The age of Book of Mormon, In The Heights, and the phenomenon of Hamilton | | 61:26–69:43 | The streaming/viral era: Dear Evan Hansen, Greatest Showman, Be More Chill—cast albums as digital hits | | 70:53–end | Molanphy’s personal reflection: The new generation (“Hamil-kids”) and their Broadway devotion |

---

Final Segment: A Generational Note & Musical Performance

• [70:53] Chris dedicates the episode to his soon-to-be stepchildren, Anna and Tom, self-proclaimed theater kids.
• [71:47] Tom (age 12) closes the show by performing “Requiem” from Dear Evan Hansen, symbolizing the enduring personal, generational appeal of show tunes.

---

Conclusion

This episode elegantly illustrates the cyclical, ever-mutating relationship between Broadway and the mainstream—how show tunes once defined pop music, retreated into their own world, and now, through both nostalgia and innovation (plus the power of streaming and virality), are reasserting cultural relevance, especially with younger generations. As Molanphy puts it, “In their world, show tunes are the Hit Parade.”

---

For listeners unsure where to jump in:

• Want the historical context? Try [00:09–15:39]: The history of cast albums as cultural dominance.
• Curious about Broadway songs as chart-toppers? Listen to [21:25–33:17] (Hair and concept musicals).
• Interested in the streaming era/Viral musicals? Check [61:26–69:43] (Dear Evan Hansen, Be More Chill).
• Need a moving finish? [71:47–end]: The next generation sings Broadway’s future.

---

“Americans in the 80s and 90s may have seemed allergic to flesh and blood humans breaking into song, but animated characters? That was no problem at all.”
— Chris Molanphy [41:56]

Transcript

[Tom]

You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.

[Chris Melancon]

Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Sixty years ago in 1959, a stage musical by the legendary team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein made its debut on Broadway. Within a few months In January of 1960, its original cast recording was the number one album in America.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Silver white winters that melt into springs these are a few of my favorite.

[Chris Melancon]

Things to this day, this recording of the Sound of Music, led by Broadway star Mary Martin recorded, remains the best charting cast album of a stage musical in Billboard history, having spent 16 weeks on top of the album charts. And this song, My Favorite Things, is one of its most indelible standards. Indeed, the song is so well known by the general public that six decades later, pop megastar Ariana Grande built a number one smash out of it. The chart topping 7 rings is a knowing homage to My Favorite Things. Its use of the Sound of Music song is so overpowering that reportedly, the estate of Rodgers and Hammerstein wound up taking the majority of the Ariana Grande song's publishing rights. This is the closest that Broadway music gets to the top of the charts in the 21st century, even when a Broadway show is utterly massive. Hamilton, the Broadway blockbuster of the 2010s composed by and starring Lin Manuel Miranda, has generated gold and platinum albums filled with a blend of modern hip hop and show tunes. But you won't hear its acclaimed songs on the airwaves. Of course, to be fair, original cast Broadway music has long been a hard fit on top 40 radio, but in the mid 20th century, the music of Broadway was the lingua franca of American popular culture, both in the early days of the Hit Parade, oh what a.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Beautiful morning.

[Chris Melancon]

And even several years after the birth of rock and roll.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

No, I never heard them at all Till there was you.

[Chris Melancon]

At times, Broadway originated music has even topped the Hot 100, although attempts to hybridize post rock pop music into show tunes have at times been anomalous. Give me a head with hair, Long beautiful hair. But even as Broadway has become technically detached from the pop charts, its impact on popular music remains unmistakable. Whether it is sampled by rappers and pop stars.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

It'S a hard knock alive.

[Chris Melancon]

For us or brought into the cinema before it makes its way to the Great White Way. In the 2010s, Broadway musicals are their own hit parade. Today on Our Hit Parade Just weeks after the annual Tony Awards, we offer a brief survey of the history of Broadway and the Billboard charts. That history has been erratic, sporadic, and for fans of the great American art form known as the musical, often frustrating. But to better understand Broadway's relationship to the charts in the rock and hip hop eras, it might help to go back to the last time Broadway swept the charts. In fact, it was almost 50 years ago now.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius.

[Chris Melancon]

And that's where your hit parade marches today, the week ending May 10, 1969, when the Broadway musical Hair not only held down the number one spot on the Billboard album chart, songs from the musical covered by then current pop acts simultaneously held down the top two spots on the Hot 100, led by the fifth dimension's medley of Aquarius and Let the Sunshine In.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Shine.

This is from Oklahoma. Here's the lyrics right here.

[Tom]

Story with a fringe on top yes, perfect.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Ooh.

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry When I take you out in my surrey When I take you out in my surrey with the fringe on top.

[Chris Melancon]

Now you by the time Billy Crystal's Harry in the 1989 film when Harry Met Sally sang Surrey with the Fringe on Top in front of his ex wife's new boyfriend Ira, the Broadway musical had been a vital form of American popular culture for more than half a century. No wonder the song felt so familiar to Harry and Sally. The show it came from Oklahoma. Helped invent the very idea of what the staged musical was.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry When I take you out in the surrey When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top.

[Chris Melancon]

A single episode of our podcast does not offer room enough to take on the full rich history of the musical. The musical remains one of America's great cultural exports, beloved the world over. And Oklahoma helped define it, codifying the so called integrated musical that we now take for granted. A staged narrative not only punctuated by music, but driven by it. In 1943, a recording of the first Broadway cast of Oklahoma, issued in a booklet of 78 RPM records, even helped invent the very idea of the cast album.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Oh what a beautiful morning oh what a beautiful, beautiful day I got a beautiful feeling Everything's going my way.

[Chris Melancon]

This is what interests us on Hit Parade. The Billboard charts were themselves invented in the early 1940s, and as 78 rpm shellac gramophones gave way to the 3313 vinyl LP cast albums were some of America's earliest and biggest chart hits. The same went for the songs. Broadway musicals were reliable generators of hit singles, especially in the pre rock era of Tin Pan Alley when catchy songs were like currency and a hit could be recorded by multiple acts, sometimes in a single year. For example, the 1949 Broadway smash by Rodgers and Hammerstein, South Pacific added the song Some Enchanted Evening to the great American songbook.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Some Enchanted Evening, you may see us playing Joy.

[Chris Melancon]

This version by opera and Broadway singer Ezio Pinza came from the original cast recording of South Pacific. But Pinza wasn't alone. Every major singer of the age took the song on. Some enchanted evening made Billboard's top 10 four more times in 1949 alone. Whether by Frank Sinatra, Some Enchanted Evening.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Bing Crosby, you May See a Stranger.

[Chris Melancon]

Joe Stafford, you May See a Stranger.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Across a crowded room, or Perry Como.

[Chris Melancon]

Who took it all the way to number one in Billboard in the summer of 49.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

You know, even then.

[Chris Melancon]

Of course, the breakthrough of rock and roll in the mid-1950s would pose a challenge not only to these big band and crooner era vocalists, but to the very idea of the pop standard. However, on the charts this shift was hardly instantaneous. Even after the breakthrough of rock, Broadway music was still at the center of popular music and its greatest hits would still be re recorded multiple times. For example, the Leonard Bernstein Stephen Sondheim Broadway classic West side story opened in 1958, three years after Rock's breakthrough and and west side Story added several classics to the western canon. The Tony and Maria duet Tonight, originally performed on Broadway by stage actors Larry Kurt and Carol Lawrence.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Tonight, Tonight, the World Is Full of.

Light.

[Chris Melancon]

Was eventually re recorded by everyone from piano duo Ferrante and Teicher, who took it into the top 10, To british singer shirley bassey who brought it to the uk charts.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

I'll see my love tonight and fasters will stop where they are.

[Chris Melancon]

Beyond these singles, the real chart blockbusters of the 1950s and early 60s, both before and after rock, were Broadway cast albums. Because the integrated musical told a coherent story through song a a cast LP could present a narrative even for those who could not afford a Broadway ticket. Americans who lived nowhere near New York City bought Broadway cast albums both as content for their new hi fi systems and as souvenirs of a modern post war middle class lifestyle. In 1956, the album that knocked Elvis Presley's debut LP out of the number one spot was was the cast album to the Julie Andrews Rex Harrison smash My Fair Lady.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

I Could have Danced all night I could have danced all night and still have begged for more.

[Chris Melancon]

My Fair lady was the long distance runner of cast albums, spending nearly 500 weeks somewhere on the Billboard album chart and returning to number one multiple times in 1957, 58 and 59. Charting alongside my Fair lady was the original cast to 1958's Tony winner the Music man, which itself spent a dozen weeks at number one. Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for the following year. The cast album to Rodgers and Hammerstein's most exotic musical, the Asian flavored Flower drum song, spent three weeks on top in 1959.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

When I have a brand new hairdo with my eyelashes all in curl I float has the clouds on I enjoy.

[Chris Melancon]

Being a Girl in 1960, the top album of the year, as I mentioned, at the top of the show was the original cast to Rodgers and Hammerstein's celebration of the von Trapp family, the Sound of Music.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

You're fond of bonds and you own a lot I have a plane and.

A diesel yacht Plenty of nothing you haven't got how can love survive?

[Chris Melancon]

And in 1961, the year's top album was the original cast to the Julie Andrews Richard Burton Broadway smash that reimagined the Court of King Arthur. Camelot.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

The Winter is Forbidden till December and exits March 2 on the dot by order, Summer lingers through September in Camelot.

[Chris Melancon]

In short, from 1956 through 1961, a Broadway cast LP not only topped the album chart multiple weeks each year, in most of these years, a cast album was the country's best seller. If we expand our definition of show tunes to include movie adaptations of Broadway hits, 1961's Oscar Best Picture winner generated the biggest album blockbuster of them all, the soundtrack to west side Story.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Somewhere we'll find a new way of.

Living we'll find no way of forgiving.

[Chris Melancon]

Starting in May of 1962, just after the movie won Best Picture, and lasting through May of 1963, the West Side Story LP, credited to Hollywood star Natalie Wood but actually sung by ghost vocalist Marnie Nixon, set an album chart record. It still holds to this day, 54 weeks at number one across Billboard's then separate mono and stereo album charts, these album blockbusters captured Broadway at the tail end of what theater historians would later call the golden era of the musical generally agreed to span the early 1940s through the start of the 1960s. Before this period sputtered out, Broadway would see one more spurt of chart dominance thanks to a smash Jerry herman musical from 1964 that portrayed a matchmaker from the turn of the 20th century. The Carol Channing Showcase hello Dolly.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Here's my hat fellas I'm staying where.

I'm at fellas I shall never go away again.

[Chris Melancon]

In the first half of 1964, hello Dolly was a cultural phenomenon. Of course, if you know anything about music in 1964 you may recall there was another even larger cultural phenomenon breaking in America that year. The Beatles arrived on US shores in February 1964, landing in New York just weeks after hello Dolly premiered at the St. James Theater. Oddly, the Beatles were minor fans of musical theater themselves since their days playing Red Light district clubs in Hamburg, Germany. The Fab Four had in their repertoire a cover of the song Till There Was yous from the Music man, and in their televised live performance on the Ed Sullivan show, the second song in the Beatles set, a song their US label, Capitol Records encouraged them to play for their new American fan base was Til There Was yous.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

There were bells on a hill But I never heard them ringing no, I never, never had them at all Till there was you.

[Chris Melancon]

As we told you in an early episode of Hit Parade, the Beatles Billboard feats during their US breakthrough were staggering. They set several chart records that hold to this day. One of the most amazing was the Fab Four's uninterrupted streak of three back to back number one hits on the Hot 100, I want to hold you'd hand, she loves you and can't buy me Love. But one ironic footnote of this period of Beatlemania was the song that finally ended the band's streak at number one after 14 weeks in May of 64, the Beatles were ushered out of the top spot by a man roughly 33 times their age, 62 year old Louis Armstrong with his cover of hello Dolly.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Hello Dolly, this is Louis Dolly, it's so nice to have you back where you belong.

[Chris Melancon]

In short, Beatlemania briefly gave way to Dolly mania on the album chart too. The Beatles second album was was booted from the number one spot first by the hello Dolly Broadway cast album, then immediately by Armstrong's own Dolly titled album. And it is appropriate that Dolly went head to head with the Beatles on the charts. As has been well chronicled by pop historians, the Liverpool group, led by the songwriting duopoly of John Lennon and Paul McCartney would deliver a blow to the songwriting factories that had churned out hits in the first half of the 20th century. Tin Pan Alley and Broadway, aka the Great White Way on the charts. The integrated musical the story set to music in essence gave way to the self contained performer. In Hollywood, the era of the mega musical movie was also nearing its end. The 1965 film of the Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews, gave the Rodgers and Hammerstein school of musical one last box office and chart hurrah. Its soundtrack topped the Billboard album chart in November 1965 alongside albums by the Beatles and Bob Dylan. But while Hollywood in the late 60s entered its now storied youthquake period of Bonnie and Clyde, the Graduate and Easy Rider, there was one last Broadway cast album that achieved a total Billboard chart conquest. And it was anomalous in virtually every way. Gimme Hair with Hair Long, beautiful hair.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Shining, cleaning, stinging flax and waxing hair.

[Chris Melancon]

Was both a musical theater and pop chart event. In hippie parlance, you might call it a happening. Developed in 1967 in the wake of the Summer of Love and debuting on Broadway in 1968, hair was arguably the pivot point for understanding how America's relationship to show tunes changed in the late 20th century. Hair was the Great White Way's first serious attempt to reckon with rock and roll music. It featured nudity and a song whose lyrics literally listed sex acts. It helped usher in the era of the so called concept musical. Hair is less a narrative than a collection of songs, thematic sequences and character interactions. In later years, other less freaky but more form breaking musicals like Company and A Chorus Line would echo Hair's conceptual looseness. Finally, Haer crossed over to the pop charts, not just the album chart, but the radio in a bigger way than any show had since the heyday of the the 1940s and South Pacific. The Fifth Dimension were a Los Angeles based adult contemporary pop vocal group led by the couple Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. The five person male female combo had already scored top 10 hits with up, up and Away and Stoned Soul Picnic. While touring New York in 1968, Billy Davis met the producer of Hair and invited him to see the Fifth Dimension's New York show. In return, the producer invited the group to see Hair. By the time they left the Biltmore Theater, the Fifth Dimension members were so talented, taken by the musical's opening number, Aquarius, with its memorable line this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius, that they agreed they should record the song themselves. The only catch was that Aquarius felt like half a song in the musical. It is a couple of minutes long and ends rather abruptly, so their producer suggested that they graft Aquarius on onto a song from the very End of the Musical, a rousing gospel flavored sing along titled the Flesh Failures with the parenthetical subtitle Let the Sunshine In Let.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

The sun shine in Let the sun shine in.

[Chris Melancon]

The 5th dimension's Aquarius let the sunshine in debuted on the Hot 100 in early March 1969. As their single rose on the Hot 100, the Hair original cast album soared into the top 20, then the top 10. By mid April, the 5th Dimension's Aquarius reached number one, by the way, becoming one the of only two songs that originated in stage musicals ever to top the Hot 100 after Louis Armstrong's hello Dolly two weeks later, the Broadway cast album of Hair was also number one in its 39th week on the album chart and back on the Hot 100, two songs from Hair were in the top five.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Shoulder length, longer Here Baby.

There Mama, Everywhere, Daddy, Daddy has the.

[Chris Melancon]

Cowsills, a family band from New England that would later provide the inspiration for TV's the Partridge Family, recorded a cover of the title song from Hair for a TV variety show. The Cowsills cover proved so popular that they issued it as a single and got swept up into hair mania by mid May. With the fifth dimension's Aquarius let the sunshine in still at number one, the Cowsill's hair rose to no. 2. This unlikely fusion of Broadway hippie rock and now light pop had fueled the top album and the top two singles in America. Two weeks later, as Aquarius and and Hair finally slipped from the number one and number two spots, yet another hair cover debuted on the Hot 100.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Good Morning Starshine, the earth says hello, you twinkle above us, we twinkle below.

[Chris Melancon]

William Oliver Swafford, AKA Oliver, jumped in with a cover of Good Morning Starshine. By mid July his single had risen to number three on the Hot 100 and a month later yet another unrelated pop act debuted with yet another cover taken from the Broadway musical. Three Dog Night, who would go on to become one of the top charting acts of the early 70s, broke through in the summer of 1969 with a pair of back to back top five hits, a cover of the Harry Nielsen song One and another cover of the Hair song Easy to Be hard. By late September 1960, 1969, Three Dog Night had taken easy to be hard to no. 4 and the hair Cast album, serving as an accidental compilation of the originals of all of these hits, was still in the top 10. Frankly, none of the performers covering Hair songs was edgy. The Broadway show was arguably more daring than they were. On the other hand, all all of this, radio attention made a show that could have remained a New York phenomenon half a decade after the peak of Broadway cast albums more accessible to national pop audiences. The show gave the performers edge, and the performers made the show winsome and approachable. This perhaps explains why the Hair phenomenon proved unrepeatable to this day, half a century later, Hair remains the last Broadway cast album to top the Billboard album chart. Though no album, no chart happening would ever replicate Hair precisely, there were theatrical projects that strongly resembled it, and one topped the charts just two years later, even though it was, to that point, all album and no show.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Jesus Christ.

[Chris Melancon]

If any production was going to benefit from the success of Hair, it should have been Jesus Christ Superstar, a retelling of the story of Jesus of Nazareth and his betrayer Judas, as a rock musical. Except British composers and and librettists Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, both in their early 20s, couldn't get it on stage, even after winning acclaim for a very small late 60s production of their future hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. No theatrical producer in London's West End or otherwise would touch Jesus Christ Superstar, so their manager got them a contract to produce the show as an album instead. In the rock world, the concept album or rock opera a la the who's Tommy had finally made the form commercially viable. Jesus Christ Superstar would be a stage show on two LPs without the stage. Lloyd Webber and Rice even hired an actual rock star, Ian Graham Gillen of the band Deep Purple. To play Jesus for Judas. They hired theater actor Murray Head, who had just come off acting in the West End production of Hair. The album succeeded beyond anyone's imaginings. Released in 1970, by February of 1971, Jesus Christ Superstar was the number one album in America, even though there was as yet no stage show. Jesus Christ Superstar was helped along by a tender ballad the composers wrote for their Mary Magdalene character, I Don't Know how to Love him, sung on the album by future rock and disco singer Yvonne Elliman.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Know how to take this I don't see why he moves me.

[Chris Melancon]

Before Elliman's version was even issued as a single, an upand coming hitmaker named Helen Reddy took her majestic cover onto the charts in June of 1971. Both versions, Ready's and and Elements, peaked on the Hot 100 simultaneously. Reddy's version of I Don't Know how to Love him was the bigger hit, reaching number 13. While Jesus Christ Superstar was finally mounted as a Broadway show in late 1971, and it would become A theatrical perennial in the decades to come, including a recent hit televised live production on NBC, No version ever did better on the charts than the original rock opera double LP concept album. Critics and Andrew Lloyd Webber himself panned the 1971 Broadway version and it won no Tony Awards. Perhaps more dismaying from the perspective of 70s Broadway fans was that actual Broadway music was no longer a serious commercial prospect. Hair had connected the musical to rock at the end of the 60s, but Jesus Christ Superstar affirmed that rock albums and cast albums were now operating on different tracks. The theatrical God rock mini fad of the early 70s did produce one more top 40 hit, the musical Godspell, which actually reached the Broadway stage before. Jesus Christ Superstar, despite seeming like a hybrid of superstar and hair, generated a number 13 hit in 1972 with the biblical ballad Day by Day.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

O Dear Lord, three things I pray.

[Chris Melancon]

But for the rest of the 1970s, no matter how acclaimed or culturally resonant the Broadway show, the music, even songs that seemed to blanket TV talk shows and enter the pop canon would remain absent on the radio and on the Billboard charts that included such Tony winning smash musicals as A Chorus Line.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Give.

Her your Attention Annie.

[Chris Melancon]

And even the Wiz, an African American retelling of the story of the wizard of Oz that helped launch the career of singer Stephanie Mills. The the bifurcation of the theatrical cast album from the pop charts in this period was often bizarre because songs from musicals could and did still top the charts, just not from the stage. For example, a smash 70s Broadway show commemorating the 1950s called Grease ran on Broadway for a then record eight years from 1972 to 1980. But the cast album didn't even appear on the Billboard album chart and the songs were largely known by theater aficionados until the musical was turned by producer Robert Stigwood Into a blockbuster 1978 movie starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. That soundtrack hit number one, went multi platinum and produced several chart topping hits. Or consider the signature song from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's follow up to Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, a musical about ultra populist Argentine first lady Eva Peron. As with superstar, Lloyd Webber and Rice first mounted Evita as a concept album fronted by stage actress and singer Julie Covington, and the song's centerpiece ballad Don't Cry for Me Argentina, actually topped the UK singles chart in early 1977. However, after the show was mounted in the West End of London in 1978 and on Broadway in 1979, the cast albums produced no hits either with UK Evita actress Elaine Page or New York's Evita Patti LuPone. This divergence between the charts and the stage persisted into the 1980s, the decade of the transatlantic. Mega musical spectacles like Cats, Les Miserables and the Phantom of the Opera generated songs that entered the show tunes canon and made Broadway audiences swoon, but none was a serious chart hit. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Long Running Cats in particular spawned the seemingly inescapable pageant favorite Memory. And two titans of adult contemporary pop took it on. Barbra Streisand, whose single reached number 52 in the spring of 1982, And Barry Manilow, who surprisingly wound up with the version that made the top 40 in the winter of 1983. But even Barry could only get it as far as number 39. As for Tim Rice, after he parted ways with Lloyd Webber and struck out on his own, he teamed up with with Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulveus of the Swedish band Abba to create the musical Chess. This project would generate hits on both sides of the Atlantic. Except, as with Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, it was the pre stage concept album of Chess that generated the hits, not the cast album. In England, the ballad I Know him so well topped the the UK chart in early 1985. And in America, in an even bigger surprise, the exoticized pop song One Night in Bangkok, sung by the Way by Murray Head, the same stage performer who played Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, reached number three on the Hot 100 in the spring of 85. It was a rare US chart victory for an 80s show tune, but again, there was no show. Chess would not be mounted on London's West End until 1986 or the Broadway stage until 1988. And anyway, in the decade of Dixie's Midnight Runners and Men Without Hats, One Night in Bangkok read mostly as another charming MTV fueled new wave fluke for you trivia fans out there, can you name the only single from an actual Broadway cast album to top a Billboard chart in the 1980s? No. It wasn't from Cats or Les Mis and it wasn't on the Hot 100. This song topped the R B chart and it was by stage actress Jennifer Holiday. In 1982, Holiday not only won the Tony for her portrayal of Effie in Broadway's Dreamgirls, a reimagining of the story of Motown and the Supremes. That summer she took the epic soul torch song and I am telling you, I'm not going to number one on Billboard's Black singles chart for a full month.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

There's just no way. There's no way we're part of the.

[Chris Melancon]

Same Beloved by RB audiences and black radio and I am telling you did not make the pop top 40. Indeed, no actual show tune from an 80s cast album made the upper reaches of the Hot 100, whether it was a contemporary artist recording a Broadway song, such as El DeBarge's title song from the ill fated musical Starlight Express, Or the Phantom of the Opera's Michael Crawford, universally praised for his singing as the mega musical's title character, but he was unable to cross over to the charts with his signature aria, the Music Music of the Night. Yet quietly, cast albums continued to sell. Phantom of the Opera was issued in two versions, a double disc full cast recording and a single single disc highlights edition. And even though neither version cracked the top 30 on the album chart, they sold steadily, consistently, week by week, for decades. In fact, each edition of Phantom has been on the album chart more than 250 weeks, each ranking among the longest running album chart hits in Billboard history. If added together, the two Phantom cast albums would come in six second among all albums, behind only Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Going into the 90s, the Broadway aesthetic seemed utterly removed from the center of pop music. Cultural critics began observing that the very idea of characters spontaneously breaking into song had come to seem old hat to Generation X. Except here was the thing. Americans in the 80s and 90s may have seemed allergic to flesh and blood humans breaking into song, but animated characters? That was no problem at all. Whether it was a mermaid, An anthropomorphized teapot.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Time song is old as rhyme.

[Chris Melancon]

Beauty and the Beast, an animated street urchin and Middle Eastern princess, Or a meek rat and a warthog living in the Pride lands of Africa.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

It's our Problem Free Philosophy.

[Chris Melancon]

The Disney animation renaissance of the late 80s and early 90s was driven by show tunes. Indeed, the writers of such features as the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King were largely Broadway veterans. Star composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who worked on the first three of these features, cut their teeth on the 80s stage smash Little Shop of Horrors, And all of these feature films would one day become actual stage musicals. In their day, they not only dominated the box office, but their music crossed over on the pop charts. Disney was especially good in the early 90s to veteran R and B crooner Peabo Bryson, who scored two hits from Disney animated films. His top 10 duet with Celine Dion, Beauty and the Beast.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Repent beauty and.

[Chris Melancon]

And a number one duet with regina bell from aladdin a whole new world. This was what made the chart blockade of actual show tunes in the final years of the 20th century so mystifying. Americans were consuming virtually the same product, musically integrated story songs that advanced plot and character like the Best of Broadway. But they would not abide actual Broadway music. To be fair, the corporatization and narrow casting of radio formats by the 1990s did more to prevent Broadway crossover than any actual stated preference by the average American. The fact that these Disney songs were seen as children's material likely served as a Trojan horse with radio programmers for Mencken's and Ashman's stage worthy compositions. Or perhaps the Great White Way just needed to try connecting with a new generation of potential young theatergoers. Maybe Broadway had to go fully 90s.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments. Oh dear. 525,600 minutes. How do you measure.

[Chris Melancon]

Brent was a reinvention of the Puccini opera La Boheme as a story of New York bohemians living in the shadow of HIV aids, and it emerged as the first major Generation X musical. Its creator, Jonathan Larson, quite literally gave his life for the show. He died unexpectedly the morning of Rent's first Off Broadway preview performance from an aortic tear that was misdiagnosed as stress. When the rock musical transferred in the spring of 1996 from a downtown New York theater workshop to an uptown Broadway theater, the Tony winning Rent became the most enduring show of its era, eventually running for a dozen years. For a time, Rent caught on with young people as if it were a rock band. Teens and 20 somethings would see the show multiple times, camping out for discounted day of show tickets. As for the music, when the Rent original cast album arrived in the early fall of 1996, its debut at number 19 instantly made it the highest charting cast album in a decade and a half since Dreamgirls in 1982. Rent's signature song, Seasons of Love, would eventually become a top 40 hit, although it would take the better part of a decade when the musical was remade as a movie in 2005, most of the original Broadway cast both appeared in the film and re recorded the music. Music the second version of Seasons of Love peaked at number 33 on the Hot 100 in December 2005, fueled not by radio airplay but by strong digital sales of the track on the then relatively new iTunes music store. Depending on your perspective, it was either remarkable that the song broke through on the charts at all, or shocking that it didn't chart higher. But again, Broadway music was no longer considered pop chart music, at least not in original show tunes form. But in an era when hip hop was a ascendant and sampling and musical interpolation was the path to a hit single, show tunes started showing up in some of the most improbable places. It's the Hard Apple Brooklyn rapper Jay z titled his 1998 album Volume 2 Hard Knock Life, and the album's title track and highest charting single was built off a sample of the song it's the Hard Knock life from the 1977 musical Annie.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Static kisses We.

[Chris Melancon]

Jay Z's show tunes homage proved inspiring to other performers. Gwen Stefani, former lead singer of the ska rock band no Doubt, who went solo as a hip hop flavored pop singer in the mid aughts, was clearly a fan of musicals. She built two top ten hits out of interpolations of showtook. First, in 2004, she turned Fiddler on the Roof's if I Were a Rich man into her number seven hit Rich Girl. And then in 2006 she turned the Sound of Music's the Lonely Goatherd into her number six hit Wind It Up. This has been the unmistakable Trend in the 21st century. The last two decades have seen practically every cultural medium pop music, the cinema, television re establish its connections to show tunes, while in the other direction, Broadway itself has rebuilt its connections to mainstream pop culture. Hollywood's breakthrough came just a couple of years into the new century. After several decades in the movie wilderness, Hollywood characters, not just the animated ones, were finally breaking into song again.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

He had it coming. He only had himself to blame. If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it, I bet you you would have done the same process.

[Chris Melancon]

The 2002 film adaptation of Chicago, the 1975 John Kander Fred Ebb show, directed by former Broadway dancer Rob Marshall and starring Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta Jones, was both a box office smash and an Oscar Best Picture winner. Its soundtrack even hit number two on the album chart. More importantly, Chicago reopened the floodgates to the movie musical, leading to a string of box office and often Oscar success stories, all with billboard no number one soundtrack albums. From the 2006 film adaptation of Dream Girls. To the 2008 Meryl Streep starring film Mamma Mia.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Here I Go Again. My my.

[Chris Melancon]

To the 2012 big screen adaptation of Les Miserables. Mamma Mia. In particular also typified another distinctly 21st century trend. The Rise of the Jukebox Musical A show built out of a catalog of pre existing pop songs. Though the term and the concept dated back decades, the arrival at the turn of the millennium of Mamma Mia, which built a cheeky, fluffy story out of the hits of Swedish band abba, set a new template for the jukebox musical and gave it rocket fuel. If the pop charts were no longer going to coronate the music of Broadway, Broadway was going to co opt the music of the pop charts. Eventually, these musical contraptions would even become respectable. Five years after Mamma Mia. Made its blockbuster Broadway debut, another jukebox musical built out of the 60s and 70s hits of the four seasons called Jersey Boys would take home the Tony for Best Musical.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Oh what a night, Late December back in 63. What a very special special time for me.

[Chris Melancon]

Or how about a musical that began its life as a joke on a foul mouthed TV show? The Book of Mormon was developed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of the witheringly satirical animated television show South Park. Parker and Stone unironically loved musicals. Their first pre fame project was the film the Musical, and their acclaimed 1999 South park movie Bigger, Longer and Uncut was also a full blown musical that even earned an Oscar nomination for the Book of Mormon, which began as a 2003 South park episode skewering the Mormon religion. Parker and Stone teamed with with composer Robert Lopez, the creator of the Tony winning Avenue Q, helped them write witty, sardonic but oddly poignant songs like I.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Believe and I Believe that ancient Jews.

Built boats and sailed to America.

[Chris Melancon]

I am a Mormon and a Mormon trust Believe. After star Andrew Reynolds performed I believe on the 2011 Tony Awards telecast. The night that the show took home nine Tonys, the Book of Mormon original cast album soared on the Billboard album chart all the way up to number three. That instantly made it the highest charting Broadway album in 32 years. The Book of Mormon was the first first top 10 cast album since Hair reached number one in 1969. So winning Tonys for a jukebox musical like Jersey Boys was hard. Returning show tunes to The Billboard top 10 a la book of Mormon was even harder. But perhaps the hardest Broadway feat of all was meeting current popular music where it lived, coming up with a credible original musical based around hip hop, and playwright and composer Lin Manuel Miranda did it twice. In the Heights was the first major hip hop musical, but it was more than that. Set in the Latin American New York neighborhood along Washington Heights near where Miranda himself grew up, in the Heights merged not only rap, with Miranda himself dropping some bars on stage, but also salsa and merengue in ways that felt unusually contemporary. When the show made its stage debut, its cast album did respectably but not exceptionally on the charts, peaking at number 82 the same month that in the Heights won the Tony for Best Musical. Miranda was only 28 when he took home the Tony, already making him a precocious Left Field Award winner and marking him as an exceptional young playwright and composer. But who could have guessed that he would top all of these achievements with his theatrical follow up? And even if you've been nowhere near New York City in the last five years, I strongly suspect you're familiar with this one. How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by Providence impoverished and squamous grow up to be Hamilton is a national and international smash. Not just on Broadway, where Lin Manuel Miranda's adaptation of Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton swept the Tonys and regularly sells out at the Richard Rogers Theater, but in every city. It has toured across America and in London's West End. What is equally remarkable, especially for us at Hit Parade, is the chart impact of Hamilton, particularly with Generation Z. The Hamilton original cast album not only reached number three on the Billboard album chart, matching the peak of the Book of Mormon, it reached number one on the Rap Albums chart. It is also a chart perennial as I record this podcast, the Hamilton cast album is still hovering around the top 40 in its 194th week on the Billboard album chart. This is largely due to the generation of so called Hamil kids who discover the musical every week, every month and every year, teaching themselves to drop bars rapid fire like David Diggs Lafayette. Or who swoon to the Schuyler Sisters ballad Helpless. Hamilton even generated a left field chart topping album in December of 2016. A various artists compilation produced by Lin Manuel Miranda called the Hamilton Mixtape debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart. Unofficially, it was the first Broadway related album to top the chart since Hair. Although it isn't really a cast album. True to its title, the Hamilton Mixtape is a collection of recordings by contemporary rap and pop stars covering the songs of Hamilton in their own idiom from the streets of Queens. The definition of what it was written means. Know what I mean? It has been argued that Hamilton has raised an entire generation of new show tunes fans. Further evidence for this this came in 2017 in the form of the Tony winning Dear Evan Hansen, a musical starring young TV and movie actor Ben Platt that adapted millennial pop and rock styles to show tunes, much the way Hamilton.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Adapted rap on the outside Always looking in Will I ever be more than I've always been Cause I'm tap tap tap tapping on the glass Waving Through.

[Chris Melancon]

A Window when the Dear Evan Hansen Cast album debuted on the Billboard album chart In February of 2017, all the way up at number eight, it became the first Broadway cast LP to debut within the top 10 since Camelot in 1961. In general, 2017 was a good year for Dear Evan Hansen composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. They are emerging as the multi hyphenate duo of 2010's Show Tunes, a Rodgers and Hammerstein for their generation. That year alone, they won both the Tony for Dear Evan Hansen and an Oscar for their contributions to the movie musical La La.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Somebody's eyes to light up the skies to open the world and send it really a voice Just.

[Chris Melancon]

How youth friendly was Dear Evan Hansen. Its emotional centerpiece anthem Waving Through a Window was remixed EDM style by club DJs and in December 2017 this remix reached number one one on Billboard's Club Play chart. As we near the end of the 2010s show tunes are virtually everywhere, Disney continues to produce Broadway style movie musicals. Their 2013 smash Frozen, which won an Oscar for for the hit Let It Go, has already become a hit Broadway show and will soon spawn a sequel. Similarly, the live action movie musical the Greatest Showman, produced by and starring sometime Broadway actor Hugh Jackman, will also be abroad. Broadway Adaptation In Reverse it is due to reach the Great White Way later this year. A fictionalized retelling of the story of circus creator P.T. barnum, the greatest Showman stunned the music industry last year by becoming not only 2018's top selling soundtrack, but the year's biggest album period in pure sales, shifting more than 1.4 million copies. Even in this age of streaming music, For all this recent show tunes ubiquity, it's fair to ask what would it take for an actual Broadway song to become a pop chart hit in the 2020s? As we noted at the top of the show, Ariana Grande's Hot 100 topping interpolation of My Favorite Things as 7 Rings offers one answer. Or perhaps Broadway stars will provide their own interpolations, as Lin Manuel Miranda is and Ben Platt did in 2018 with their duet Found Tonight, a mashup of Hamilton's the Story of Tonight and Dear Evan Hansen's you will be found. The single was the number one download the week of its release. But in an age when streaming music rules the Hot 100, it missed the top 40. For clues on what it might take for Broadway to score a chart hit in the digital age, perhaps we should look to this month's Tony Awards. No, not the many wins by the daring new musical Hadestown or the acclaimed Broadway revival of Oklahoma. Rather, let's decode the strangest segment on the James Corden hosted Tony's broadcast. Many viewers of the telecast were scratching their heads at this comedy vignette, which took place in the Radio City Music Hall's restroom. On the show, no mention was made of the specific song that James Corden, Sarah Bareilles and Josh Groban were parodying with new lyrics about being too scared to leave the bathroom and resume hosting the Tonys. But the song they were singing was from a current Tony. In fact, it was this song from the show Be More Chill, nominated that night for best Original Score. Be More Chill went home empty handed that night, but the fact that its creators were even at the Tony, let alone seeing their song lovingly parodied by the host, would have seemed improbable a year or two earlier. A musical about a high school student who swallows an experimental pill to make him more confident, Be More Chill was first produced at a theater in Red Bank, New Jersey in 2015. Its composer, Joe Iconis, calls it, quote, a celebration of of misfits and geeks and people who feel like they don't quite belong. Actual young people relate to the characters. This off Off Off Broadway show closed quietly in 2015, but not before releasing its cast album online. To the producer's shock, this cast album went viral. Like Jesus Christ Superstar a generation earlier, it was a hit. Even in the absence of a show, the cast album has been streamed more than 200 million times and young fans enthusiasm led the creators to reopen the show, first at a New York Off Broadway theater, then on Broadway itself. Be More Chill is running at the Lyceum Theater as I speak. In short, a show with little critical acclaim produced in New Jersey is now on Broadway and it is being referenced, albeit indirectly, on the Tonys. And it was teenagers who got it there. They shared the Be More Chill music online like crazy, the way they share memes and hashtags. This is, broadly speaking, the same way recent Hot 100 number ones like In My Feelings or Old Town Road got to the top of the charts. If both Broadway shows and pop songs can cross over through viral memes, how long will it be before a pop song from a Broadway show tops the charts. It's anyone's guess, but virality among the Hamil kid generation will be the key. Speaking of that generation, before we wrap up this edition of Hit Parade, a personal note. Exactly one week after this podcast episode is released, I will be getting married to an amazing woman and proudly becoming a stepfather to her two amazing kids. Anna, age 14, and Thomas, age 12, are both self proclaimed theater kids and indeed in their world, show tunes are the Hit Parade. In the last couple of years, driving around in our family car, I've heard more Ben Platt, Jessie Mueller and Daveed Diggs than I have Drake or Ariana Grande. So Anna and Tom were the inspiration for this episode. Accordingly, I have invited Tom, who's been playing guitar for a few years now, to come into the Slate studios and play a song for this Broadway themed episode of Hit Parade. That's Tom you're hearing in the background now. We've asked him to do our outro this episode as evidence of the devotion he, his and Ana's generation has to a new generation of theatrical music. It's what the kids are playing these days, newly beloved show tunes giving Broadway composers wider platforms than ever. And after I finish these credits, Tom is going to close our show with his rendition of the Dear Evan Hansen song Requiem. But first, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Cameron Drewes and we had help this episode from Danielle Hewitt. The managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas. Our senior producer is TJ Raphael, and Gabriel Roth is the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of [e-mail] podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Melanfy and this is Tom, age 12, with his favorite favorite song from Dear Evan Hansen Requiem.

[Tom]

Why should I play this game of pretend remembering through a secondhand sorrow Such a great son and wonderful friend oh don't the tears just pour I could curl up and tighten my my room there in my bed still sobbing Tomorrow I could give in to all of the gloom but tell me, tell me what for why should I have a heavy heart? Why should I start to break in pieces? Why should I go, go and fall apart for you.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Why.

[Tom]

Should I play the grieving girl and l Saying that I miss you and that my world has gone dark without your light.

[Guest Performer / Singer]

I.

[Tom]

Will sing no requiem tonight. Gave you the world, you threw it away. Leaving these broken pieces behind you Every time Everything wasted Nothing to say so I can sing no Requiem. I hear your voice I feel you near within these words I finally find you now that I know that you are still here I will sing. Why should I have a heavy heart? Why should I say I'll keep you with me? Why should I go and fall apart for you?

[Guest Performer / Singer]

Why.

[Tom]

Should I play the grieving girl and lie Saying that I miss you and admire you? The world has gone dark without your light. I will sing no Requiem. Tonight is when the villains fall the kingdoms never weep no one lights a candle to remind no one mourns at all. And they laid them down to sleep so don't tell me that I didn't have it right. Don't tell me that it wasn't black and white after all you've put me through don't say it wasn't true that you were not the monster that I knew. Cause I cannot play the grieving girl and lie Saying that I miss you and that my world has gone dark. I will sing no Requiem I will sing no requiem. I will sing no requiem tonight. Oh, holy.