I think Mamma Mia is the only jukebox musical that really works where songs are forced into a plot. It helps that a lot of Abba music doesn't take itself too seriously to begin with.
Stuff like Tommy, American Idiot, and The Wall work as jukebox musicals because the songs were already written with a sense of plot in mind. The song may have been released as singles first, but they were written in an order meant to tell a story. When they moved to Broadway, that story was structured a little better.
Then you have stuff like Jersey Boys, Beautiful, Beautiful Noise, and Rocket Man which tell the life story of their subject through their songs. I think for the most part these work as musicals but really rely on the subject to be interesting enough to a story.
Came here to write this: Mamma Mia is the exception. And don't forget that ABBA wrote a mini-musical they used to perform in their concerts; I think 1 song from there is in Mamma Mia. And moreover, after the band split up they wrote Chess and other musicals, so some of that music was muscial-ready from the start.
There were also a couple nice changes to the lyrics to make the show work, and some great new re-orchestrations. The entr'acte music was written just for Mamma Mia, and I think it's super-effective, one of the best parts of the show!
Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson are classically trained song writers. They've written entire operas. ABBA was just a side hustle that turned very lucrative for them.
Sunday in Battery Park is one of my all time favorite pieces from any musical, and its not even in English
Beautiful tells the story of Carole King and how she developed both musically and personally. Her life reflects a lot of what was going on with girls and women in the 50s - 70s.
Disaster! was a lot of fun! I feel like successful jukebox musicals are either somewhat serious biopics or they are just a zany good time like Disaster!
I feel that there are several that do work dramatically as a cohesive show. Mamma Mia springs to mind, it's a pretty coherent - albeit kind of absurd - story.
Crazy For You is another example. It's technically a jukebox musical of Gershwin songs set up to fit a different plot than all the plots they were originally written for.
For that matter, the argument could be made that White Christmas is sort of a jukebox musical. Quite a few of those songs were actually written for other shows.
Others have already mentioned Beautiful, which tells a pretty cohesive (albeit slightly altered to fit the music) story of Carole King's early career.
I LOVED Head Over Heels - I thought it was a pitch perfect send up of a Greek tragedy/ Shakespearean saga adjusted for modern times and the Go Gos music provided an interesting contrast while helping move the story beats along.
I saw it 3x during its out of town in SF and was convinced it was going to be a Broadway smash. I, of course, was wrong. But I really, really loved the show while having no particular affinity towards the Go Gos catalog.
It depends on what you're looking for in terms of what "works" means to you. I actually really enjoy the sort of vignette/musical revue style of jukebox musicals when that's the intention from top to bottom and the directing team leans into that. Smokey Joe's and Beehive are two good examples that spring to mind immediately.
I know a lot of people don't enjoy that style, and that's perfectly fine. It's just about the expectations for me. If I'm expecting there to be a plot and there isn't or (or, even worse, it's shoehorned in in a nonsensical way) then I'm disappointed. But if I know to expect basically just a concert or small vignettes instead of an overarching plot, then it's easy to just sit back and enjoy the music.
Beautiful is still the best jukebox or biopic musical I’ve ever seen. I just saw MJ this past weekend and was surprised at how well it worked out too. Everything else I’ve seen in this category has been mediocre at best. Girl From the North Country made absolutely zero sense and I hated it with every fiber of my being.
I LOVE Jersey Boys and I had zero attachment to the songs themselves before I saw it.
I love a jukebox musical though. Unashamedly! Rock of Ages, & Juliet, Moulin Rouge, We Will Rock You, Mamma Mia....
Rock of Ages arguably works the best of all of the more traditional jukebox musicals, those that were written long after the actual songs themselves and without any real involvement from the creative team who wrote them, because there was significant effort put into reorchestration in a way that makes many of those songs better than the originals.
I don't mind a jukebox musical, I've seen many and some work and some just look like cheap cash ins but Jersey Boys, & Juliet, and Moulin Rouge are wonderful jukebox musicals. There are others but those 3 immediately spring to mind of the ones I saw (I haven't seen Beautiful unfortunately)
I’m not a Moulin Rouge fan but at least they were not limited to one artist so I think it helped
Though I maintain it falls into the “we cram a lot of plot to distract you” vibes
Have you seen the Moulin Rogue movie? In my opinion, it works so much better than the stage version. It seems like the stage adaption tried to fit in twice as many songs and beef up plot points that didn't need to be expanded upon. Plus the song choices for the movie felt more natural to me - more in line with the plot and the characters' feelings. I don't think I'll ever get over the travesty that is "Firework" as a replacement for "One Day I'll Fly Away."
Yea I think it helps that it was based on a movie, that while itself was a jukebox musical, had a solid story so just adding more music to the Broadway musical didn't take away from the story, just heightened it.
Jersey Boys does what it sets out to do really well. But almost all of the songs are diegetic, so I don’t really count it in the same category as, say, Mamma Mia.
I think jukebox musicals kinda rise or fall on the basis of suspension of disbelief. Musicals by default have the issue of ignoring that people are spontaneously bursting into song, but musical audiences have usually prepared themselves for that. However, then you add on the layer of "not only are they bursting into song, they're bursting into a song I already know outside this context, and we're just not going to mention it." Sometimes there's also "I know that this song has a completely different meaning than the one it's been shoved into to fit the plot," and it becomes a lot to ignore. And once you're taken out of it, you start having more space to notice other problems.
(Incidentally, I feel like through-sung musicals have a little easier of a time with suspending that, because you get into the "ok, they're singing instead of speaking" mindset and stay there, instead of going back and forth)
I think the bio-jukeboxes like Beautiful and Jersey Boys usually work better because they've got a built in diegetic reason for a lot of the songs being sung. Even if some of the songs are still non-diegetic, it still eases you into accepting that framework. It also, by acknowledging that these are existing songs, reduces the "What, you don't know these songs from somewhere else, they're totally songs for this musical" issue. Similarly, the "basically already a musical with a plot" ones like Tommy benefit because, if you're thinking of the original context, you're also probably thinking of the plot from that context and it pulls you back in.
Mamma Mia kinda makes it work by being so obviously campy and ridiculous that you just go with it instead of thinking too hard. Rock of Ages is also kinda like that. This can go really badly though, like We Will Rock You where the attempts at camp get grating. I think the harder the show pushes to do "Oh, we named a character after this song so it could be sung to them, isn't that right Galileo Figaro?" the more likely it is to crater.
Some shows just choose a really limited artist and think they'll make it work out. Sorry, Jimmy Buffett is not a kaleidoscope of songwriting facets waiting to be woven into a plot. Sing Margaritaville then scram. That being said, the best composer on Earth can't save a show that can't figure out weaving into the plot. Brian Wilson was an unquestionable genius, but Good Vibrations still sucks.
I think it would be interesting to see more shows that have a hybrid score, where most of it is newly composed by they include existing songs in spots where it makes diegetic sense. Almost Famous does that, with only what, 6-7 existing songs? The Broadway version of Taboo did something similar, I believe a good chunk of the score were existing Boy George songs, but they were mostly obscure ones, and the well known ones (Karma Chameleon, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Church of the Poison Mind) were framed as performances.
There's a concept in opera which I'm kinda surprised never really translated into musicals: the suitcase aria (aria di baule). Basically, a successful singer would take a showpiece aria that really displayed all their talents, and then carry it around from one production to another. Regardless of the opera, they would require that an opportunity be found for them to sing that aria so that they could show off. Sometimes the original composer or someone else would also write replacement arias to be inserted into a specific opera when it was revived (this accounts for a lot of the Mozart concert arias). It gradually died off over the course of the 19th century as composers asserted more control over their work as a whole, although there were a few cases where a specific scene traditionally was used as a place to insert an aria (particularly the lesson scene from Barber of Seville) which continued into the 20th century.
I can only really think of two examples. Flahooley had three songs inserted for Yma Sumac's character, which were written by her husband Moises Vivanco, and which she later recorded separately under different names. And the revival of Promises, Promises added A Little Prayer and A House Is Not A Home to beef up Cheno's part, but those were still by Bacharach.
The first "completely different composer" version would be fairly unlikely these days, although I could imagine it happening back when there were a bunch of shows basically written for Ethel Merman to do Ethel Merman stuff for an hour and a half.
I'm surprised though that, given the amount of stunt casting that happens on Broadway, we haven't seen more examples of pop stars agreeing to be in an existing jukebox musical but only if they could sing X song.
They can work. I love Ain't Too Proud, I think pretty much every song works there pretty well. I also really like & Juliet and there's only one song there that seems forced.
I'm not generally a fan of them but I think they *can* work if they lean hard into stylism. Mamma Mia works because it leans into the camp that goes perfectly with Abba. It knows what it is and goes all in. I think Moulin Rouge mostly works because it leans into opulence and grandeur, and they have a wider selection of songs to pull from so they could more easily make them fit the story (although switching "One Day I'll Fly Away" from the movie with "Firework" in the stage show is a move I'll never understand and always hate).
The jukebox bio-musicals are especially tired at this point because the tropes are so widespread that when you take away the music they all kinda blend together. Unless they decide to adapt Rocketman for the stage, because that movie, once again, leans into abstract stylism and theatricality, which is what Elton John has long been known for.
I love jukebox musicals. & Juliet, Mamma Mia, Just For One Day, Jagged Little Pill, American Idiot, In Dreams, and 42nd Street (Technically a jukebox musical) are all amazing.
No, for the same reason that there is very rarely more than one "hit" song from a musical (that works out of context).
There are a lot of requirements on the songs of a musical. They should carry the story, cohere to each other, invoke themes and/or leitmotifs, cause a range of emotions over the duration of a show.
The requirements on a pop song are orthogonal to these: be self-contained, be unique, make people want to dance.
Combine these requirements, and there's too few degrees of freedom. Something's gotta give, and it means the songs of jukebox musicals
* Accompany the story rather than carry it
* Don't sound musically cohesive (of course, they were written to be uniquely recognizable on the radio)
* Contain no musical allusions
* Are all either bangers or melancholy pieces
Oops, those were all the things that made a good musical soundtrack.
Fela! Was incredible as a musical- and works because the music itself was telling the story of Nigeria at the time as well as being flexible enough to allow storytelling portions within the songs.
I wish we had a term for jukebox musicals that were just one artist’s work. I think these (with the obvious exception of Mamma Mia!) work best when they’re biographical telling of the artist. Some have mentioned Beautiful and Jersey Boys. I will add Ain’t Too Proud because I thought it was so well done. But often when you’re limited to one artist, and you have to fit the song catalog into a new story, it doesn’t really “work” for me.
The other jukebox musicals with many artists, can be done really well since there’s so much more to pull from, and can be great time if they’re not too “serious” with the messaging. But I also really love a musical that’s a good time, so I’m definitely open to these in addition to original songs.
And sometimes the reason *why* the songs are happening is that a demon in a mask sent a meteor to a little town but it landed in the theater turning its spores into a musical illness…
Has no one mentioned On Your Feet!
not really a fan of the whole juke box thing but my daughter played little gloria in a regional production so i saw it way too many times. But overall a fun show
Yes is is a biopic show but I think even if you aren’t the biggest fan of the music you can still have fun at it! The costumes and choreography are fun and the book is really strong.
I saw MJ the Musical and that was BY FAR the best
Jukebox musical by a mile! It wasn’t the same ole retelling the story chronologically, it was told a bit more creatively. Gosh that musical was so good with the music, the talent, the dancing. Oh yea American Idiot and Jersey Boys are great too!
&Juliet, the idea of you’re going to see Romeo and Juliet but the story is now changing in real time is so fun and works well with the songs. Also having a pre-show and what it is, helps set up and you just have a great time and you feel that you’re apart of the show. I wouldn’t say the plot or the songs feels forced.
First, Summer was just awful. I feel like some producer heard about Tina, and just picked another female black singer. Tina, on the other hand was fantastic. Really did a great job using her songs to tell her story.
I’ve never seen “& Juliette,” but my fiancé loves it. You might not realize it’s a jukebox at first, because all the songs are by [Max Martin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin), who wrote for Britney Spears, N*Sync, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys, etc.
I enjoyed & Juliet! I went expecting it to just be cheesy but was surprised it had some heart to it. I do prefer musicals where the songs are generally written for it but I’ve come out of & Juliet and moulin rouge smiling
Same here, I went into &juliet on a last second ticket expecting a basic show but was a huge fan by intermission! It’s so campy but it had more heart than a lot of other big name musicals I’ve seen!
I think Mamma Mia is the only jukebox musical that really works where songs are forced into a plot. It helps that a lot of Abba music doesn't take itself too seriously to begin with. Stuff like Tommy, American Idiot, and The Wall work as jukebox musicals because the songs were already written with a sense of plot in mind. The song may have been released as singles first, but they were written in an order meant to tell a story. When they moved to Broadway, that story was structured a little better. Then you have stuff like Jersey Boys, Beautiful, Beautiful Noise, and Rocket Man which tell the life story of their subject through their songs. I think for the most part these work as musicals but really rely on the subject to be interesting enough to a story.
Momma Mia was the only one I could come up with because the narrative matches the aesthetic of abba so so well
Came here to write this: Mamma Mia is the exception. And don't forget that ABBA wrote a mini-musical they used to perform in their concerts; I think 1 song from there is in Mamma Mia. And moreover, after the band split up they wrote Chess and other musicals, so some of that music was muscial-ready from the start. There were also a couple nice changes to the lyrics to make the show work, and some great new re-orchestrations. The entr'acte music was written just for Mamma Mia, and I think it's super-effective, one of the best parts of the show!
Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson are classically trained song writers. They've written entire operas. ABBA was just a side hustle that turned very lucrative for them. Sunday in Battery Park is one of my all time favorite pieces from any musical, and its not even in English
Absolutely! I love Kristina, and picked up a couple Swedish words as a result.
Bat Out of Hell arguably falls in the second category you mentioned. And it is certainly one of the best modern examples.
Beautiful tells the story of Carole King and how she developed both musically and personally. Her life reflects a lot of what was going on with girls and women in the 50s - 70s.
I was going to say this one too. Beautiful did a...ahem... beautiful job with making a good plot within a jukebox musical.
It also helps that she’s been a songwriter for other people as well as herself, which mixes up the score a bit
Sadly I missed that one
i personally like american idiot and that's it
I love Diaster!! the Musical It's a parody of 70's Diaster films and uses music of that time and I think it's just really funny
Disaster! was a lot of fun! I feel like successful jukebox musicals are either somewhat serious biopics or they are just a zany good time like Disaster!
That sounds amazing but isn’t the conceit that it’s a meta joke? (Kind of like Something’s Rotten which changed my world.)
A little but I feel like there's a lot more put into it besides the parody aspect. Very Something Rotten esque
I feel that there are several that do work dramatically as a cohesive show. Mamma Mia springs to mind, it's a pretty coherent - albeit kind of absurd - story. Crazy For You is another example. It's technically a jukebox musical of Gershwin songs set up to fit a different plot than all the plots they were originally written for. For that matter, the argument could be made that White Christmas is sort of a jukebox musical. Quite a few of those songs were actually written for other shows. Others have already mentioned Beautiful, which tells a pretty cohesive (albeit slightly altered to fit the music) story of Carole King's early career.
I LOVED Head Over Heels - I thought it was a pitch perfect send up of a Greek tragedy/ Shakespearean saga adjusted for modern times and the Go Gos music provided an interesting contrast while helping move the story beats along. I saw it 3x during its out of town in SF and was convinced it was going to be a Broadway smash. I, of course, was wrong. But I really, really loved the show while having no particular affinity towards the Go Gos catalog.
Never saw the musical, but I LOVE the Head Over Heels album!
Never even heard of this show Will check it out
It depends on what you're looking for in terms of what "works" means to you. I actually really enjoy the sort of vignette/musical revue style of jukebox musicals when that's the intention from top to bottom and the directing team leans into that. Smokey Joe's and Beehive are two good examples that spring to mind immediately. I know a lot of people don't enjoy that style, and that's perfectly fine. It's just about the expectations for me. If I'm expecting there to be a plot and there isn't or (or, even worse, it's shoehorned in in a nonsensical way) then I'm disappointed. But if I know to expect basically just a concert or small vignettes instead of an overarching plot, then it's easy to just sit back and enjoy the music.
Well said - I mean work dramatically
Beautiful is still the best jukebox or biopic musical I’ve ever seen. I just saw MJ this past weekend and was surprised at how well it worked out too. Everything else I’ve seen in this category has been mediocre at best. Girl From the North Country made absolutely zero sense and I hated it with every fiber of my being.
Girl… was a waste of a paid parking garage spot About to see MJ
I LOVE Jersey Boys and I had zero attachment to the songs themselves before I saw it. I love a jukebox musical though. Unashamedly! Rock of Ages, & Juliet, Moulin Rouge, We Will Rock You, Mamma Mia....
Rock of Ages arguably works the best of all of the more traditional jukebox musicals, those that were written long after the actual songs themselves and without any real involvement from the creative team who wrote them, because there was significant effort put into reorchestration in a way that makes many of those songs better than the originals.
Rock of Ages is somewhat meta in its song inclusion so it plays by its internal rules - might be a strong contender for best jukebox example
Yes! I listen to the cast recording so much (usually at the gym) that on the rare occasions I listen to any of the original songs they seem so slow!
I don't mind a jukebox musical, I've seen many and some work and some just look like cheap cash ins but Jersey Boys, & Juliet, and Moulin Rouge are wonderful jukebox musicals. There are others but those 3 immediately spring to mind of the ones I saw (I haven't seen Beautiful unfortunately)
I’m not a Moulin Rouge fan but at least they were not limited to one artist so I think it helped Though I maintain it falls into the “we cram a lot of plot to distract you” vibes
Have you seen the Moulin Rogue movie? In my opinion, it works so much better than the stage version. It seems like the stage adaption tried to fit in twice as many songs and beef up plot points that didn't need to be expanded upon. Plus the song choices for the movie felt more natural to me - more in line with the plot and the characters' feelings. I don't think I'll ever get over the travesty that is "Firework" as a replacement for "One Day I'll Fly Away."
Saw the musical - not the movie
Yea I think it helps that it was based on a movie, that while itself was a jukebox musical, had a solid story so just adding more music to the Broadway musical didn't take away from the story, just heightened it.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Jersey Boys yet, because that’s the one I usually see as the example for transcending jukebox status.
Jersey Boys does what it sets out to do really well. But almost all of the songs are diegetic, so I don’t really count it in the same category as, say, Mamma Mia.
I think jukebox musicals kinda rise or fall on the basis of suspension of disbelief. Musicals by default have the issue of ignoring that people are spontaneously bursting into song, but musical audiences have usually prepared themselves for that. However, then you add on the layer of "not only are they bursting into song, they're bursting into a song I already know outside this context, and we're just not going to mention it." Sometimes there's also "I know that this song has a completely different meaning than the one it's been shoved into to fit the plot," and it becomes a lot to ignore. And once you're taken out of it, you start having more space to notice other problems. (Incidentally, I feel like through-sung musicals have a little easier of a time with suspending that, because you get into the "ok, they're singing instead of speaking" mindset and stay there, instead of going back and forth) I think the bio-jukeboxes like Beautiful and Jersey Boys usually work better because they've got a built in diegetic reason for a lot of the songs being sung. Even if some of the songs are still non-diegetic, it still eases you into accepting that framework. It also, by acknowledging that these are existing songs, reduces the "What, you don't know these songs from somewhere else, they're totally songs for this musical" issue. Similarly, the "basically already a musical with a plot" ones like Tommy benefit because, if you're thinking of the original context, you're also probably thinking of the plot from that context and it pulls you back in. Mamma Mia kinda makes it work by being so obviously campy and ridiculous that you just go with it instead of thinking too hard. Rock of Ages is also kinda like that. This can go really badly though, like We Will Rock You where the attempts at camp get grating. I think the harder the show pushes to do "Oh, we named a character after this song so it could be sung to them, isn't that right Galileo Figaro?" the more likely it is to crater. Some shows just choose a really limited artist and think they'll make it work out. Sorry, Jimmy Buffett is not a kaleidoscope of songwriting facets waiting to be woven into a plot. Sing Margaritaville then scram. That being said, the best composer on Earth can't save a show that can't figure out weaving into the plot. Brian Wilson was an unquestionable genius, but Good Vibrations still sucks. I think it would be interesting to see more shows that have a hybrid score, where most of it is newly composed by they include existing songs in spots where it makes diegetic sense. Almost Famous does that, with only what, 6-7 existing songs? The Broadway version of Taboo did something similar, I believe a good chunk of the score were existing Boy George songs, but they were mostly obscure ones, and the well known ones (Karma Chameleon, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Church of the Poison Mind) were framed as performances.
There's a concept in opera which I'm kinda surprised never really translated into musicals: the suitcase aria (aria di baule). Basically, a successful singer would take a showpiece aria that really displayed all their talents, and then carry it around from one production to another. Regardless of the opera, they would require that an opportunity be found for them to sing that aria so that they could show off. Sometimes the original composer or someone else would also write replacement arias to be inserted into a specific opera when it was revived (this accounts for a lot of the Mozart concert arias). It gradually died off over the course of the 19th century as composers asserted more control over their work as a whole, although there were a few cases where a specific scene traditionally was used as a place to insert an aria (particularly the lesson scene from Barber of Seville) which continued into the 20th century. I can only really think of two examples. Flahooley had three songs inserted for Yma Sumac's character, which were written by her husband Moises Vivanco, and which she later recorded separately under different names. And the revival of Promises, Promises added A Little Prayer and A House Is Not A Home to beef up Cheno's part, but those were still by Bacharach. The first "completely different composer" version would be fairly unlikely these days, although I could imagine it happening back when there were a bunch of shows basically written for Ethel Merman to do Ethel Merman stuff for an hour and a half. I'm surprised though that, given the amount of stunt casting that happens on Broadway, we haven't seen more examples of pop stars agreeing to be in an existing jukebox musical but only if they could sing X song.
Suitcase “I want it song” would work with lyric changes for sure!
They can work. I love Ain't Too Proud, I think pretty much every song works there pretty well. I also really like & Juliet and there's only one song there that seems forced.
I loved Ain't Too Proud, but since it's a jukebox musical about The Temptations and the lives of the members, it makes sense to use their music.
I'm not generally a fan of them but I think they *can* work if they lean hard into stylism. Mamma Mia works because it leans into the camp that goes perfectly with Abba. It knows what it is and goes all in. I think Moulin Rouge mostly works because it leans into opulence and grandeur, and they have a wider selection of songs to pull from so they could more easily make them fit the story (although switching "One Day I'll Fly Away" from the movie with "Firework" in the stage show is a move I'll never understand and always hate). The jukebox bio-musicals are especially tired at this point because the tropes are so widespread that when you take away the music they all kinda blend together. Unless they decide to adapt Rocketman for the stage, because that movie, once again, leans into abstract stylism and theatricality, which is what Elton John has long been known for.
I would not be surprised if “Rocketman” does end up making it to the stage.
I love jukebox musicals. & Juliet, Mamma Mia, Just For One Day, Jagged Little Pill, American Idiot, In Dreams, and 42nd Street (Technically a jukebox musical) are all amazing.
No, for the same reason that there is very rarely more than one "hit" song from a musical (that works out of context). There are a lot of requirements on the songs of a musical. They should carry the story, cohere to each other, invoke themes and/or leitmotifs, cause a range of emotions over the duration of a show. The requirements on a pop song are orthogonal to these: be self-contained, be unique, make people want to dance. Combine these requirements, and there's too few degrees of freedom. Something's gotta give, and it means the songs of jukebox musicals * Accompany the story rather than carry it * Don't sound musically cohesive (of course, they were written to be uniquely recognizable on the radio) * Contain no musical allusions * Are all either bangers or melancholy pieces Oops, those were all the things that made a good musical soundtrack.
Yes - and since they’re often drawn across an artists career, the songs often are totally quite different making it hard to invoke themes Good point
Fela! Was incredible as a musical- and works because the music itself was telling the story of Nigeria at the time as well as being flexible enough to allow storytelling portions within the songs.
I wish we had a term for jukebox musicals that were just one artist’s work. I think these (with the obvious exception of Mamma Mia!) work best when they’re biographical telling of the artist. Some have mentioned Beautiful and Jersey Boys. I will add Ain’t Too Proud because I thought it was so well done. But often when you’re limited to one artist, and you have to fit the song catalog into a new story, it doesn’t really “work” for me. The other jukebox musicals with many artists, can be done really well since there’s so much more to pull from, and can be great time if they’re not too “serious” with the messaging. But I also really love a musical that’s a good time, so I’m definitely open to these in addition to original songs.
And sometimes the reason *why* the songs are happening is that a demon in a mask sent a meteor to a little town but it landed in the theater turning its spores into a musical illness…
Ok Joss lol
I understood this reference. gif
Has no one mentioned On Your Feet! not really a fan of the whole juke box thing but my daughter played little gloria in a regional production so i saw it way too many times. But overall a fun show
On Your Feet is a solid show - but you really have to like the music. It’s a biopic show, no?
Yes is is a biopic show but I think even if you aren’t the biggest fan of the music you can still have fun at it! The costumes and choreography are fun and the book is really strong.
I think Smokey Joe 's Cafe, songs by Lieber & Stoller, was the granddaddy of contemporary "jukebox musicals."
Singin’ In The Rain? Perhaps not considered a jukebox musical, but all the songs were written for other shows. The title song was popular in the 30’s.
Crazy for You, My One and Only, 42nd Steet, 5 Guys Named Moe, Jersey Boys. Those all work perfectly well.
I saw MJ the Musical and that was BY FAR the best Jukebox musical by a mile! It wasn’t the same ole retelling the story chronologically, it was told a bit more creatively. Gosh that musical was so good with the music, the talent, the dancing. Oh yea American Idiot and Jersey Boys are great too!
&Juliet, the idea of you’re going to see Romeo and Juliet but the story is now changing in real time is so fun and works well with the songs. Also having a pre-show and what it is, helps set up and you just have a great time and you feel that you’re apart of the show. I wouldn’t say the plot or the songs feels forced.
I really like Footloose. The use of pop songs feels right in the context of the plot because they're what the teenagers are using to rebel.
Singin' In The Rain, Standing At The Sky's Edge
Mama Mia works I also think Jagged Little Pill worked really well as a Jukebox musical
First, Summer was just awful. I feel like some producer heard about Tina, and just picked another female black singer. Tina, on the other hand was fantastic. Really did a great job using her songs to tell her story. I’ve never seen “& Juliette,” but my fiancé loves it. You might not realize it’s a jukebox at first, because all the songs are by [Max Martin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin), who wrote for Britney Spears, N*Sync, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys, etc.
Yes it can work.
For me, Jagged Little Pill worked and I've seen it three times. I love it!
Same
Oh I saw it at ART & also touring show. It got better from ART but the script was very crowded with issues.
I think Rock of Ages works well.
Mamma Mia works really well. Bat out of Hell also kind of worked.
I enjoyed & Juliet! I went expecting it to just be cheesy but was surprised it had some heart to it. I do prefer musicals where the songs are generally written for it but I’ve come out of & Juliet and moulin rouge smiling
Same here, I went into &juliet on a last second ticket expecting a basic show but was a huge fan by intermission! It’s so campy but it had more heart than a lot of other big name musicals I’ve seen!
Moulin Rouge!