Cd Art Music of the Night Pops on Broadway
The all-time Broadway songs of all time
From classics by Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim to Lin-Manuel Miranda, hither are the best Broadway songs e'er.
While there'due south nothing quite similar seeing a legendary testify melody performed live on The Cracking White Way, you lot can e'er satisfy your peckish for an emotion-filled performance by cranking up a classic cast recording or rampage-watching clips on YouTube. But which ones are the best Broadway songs, the ones that we've never been able to go out of our heads? We're talking the ones that endure throughout the years, beingness discovered past each new generation through countless high school musicals.
Information technology's nearly incommunicable to narrow downward such a list of something so subjective, but we're here to try. With that in mind, we've come with these 50 Broadway bangers, a mix of classic musical-theater numbers from 1927 through today. Lots of these swept the Tony Awards and come from the best Broadway musicals the world has e'er known.
Y'all may not be familiar with all the entries on this list, but trust usa — you'll love them. Mayhap they'll introduce you to a Broadway bear witness to put on your list of must-sees. Perhaps you'll notice one to add together to your karaoke rotation. Either way, you'll go an earful of classic, heartfelt tunes that are sure to elevator your spirits.
RECOMMENDED: Full listing of Broadway musicals
All-time Broadway songs of all time
1. "Rose'due south Plow" from Gypsy (1959)
Throughout Gypsy, Mama Rose has pushed her children to be stars, even if information technology meant pushing them away from her. But in the prove's shattering climactic number, she finally takes centre stage herself, if only in her mind. Built from fragments of prior songs in Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim'due south classic score, this musical nervous breakdown—created by Sondheim and director Jerome Robbins in an inspired 3-60 minutes improvisation—takes Rose autonomously and reassembles the pieces into a sad and scary portrait of thwarted drive; the strenuous optimism of "Everything's Coming Up Roses," her first-human action finale, twists into the unquenchable demand of "everything coming upward Rose's." It's a feast for actors; no wonder the top leading ladies of their generations, from Ethel Merman and Angela Lansbury through Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone, accept yearned to take their turns at it. As frequently as it's been wrung out, the song remains inexhaustible.—Adam Feldman
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two. "Ol' Man River" from Bear witness Boat (1927)
Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein 2'south Evidence Gunkhole was a epitome for the "integrated" musical that Hammerstein would later popularize with Richard Rodgers, and it also dealt centrally with the question of racial integration. In "Ol' Man River," an African-American stevedore named Joe contrasts the travails of poor black workers with the indifference of the Mississippi River: "I get weary and sick of trying / I'yard tired of living and scared of dying / Just Ol' Man River, he just keeps rolling along." Sung by a bass—rare for Broadway songs—the song has a rumbling gravity, as Kern'due south stately music rises and falls like the peachy and recession of water. The effect is at once tragic and soothing: It offers a cosmic perspective on the ups and downs of all the characters connected to the musical's titular riverboat, tossed on the waves of fortune.—Adam Feldman
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3. "Finishing The Hat" from Sunday in the Park with George (1984)
The tune then skilful Sondheim named his books after it. From seeing Sunday in the Park with George, you know that this moody inner monologue is delivered by the Impressionist painter Georges Seurat every bit he leaves through his sketchbook and broods on the estrangement of his lover and model, Dot. "Finishing the Chapeau" is a proud but ultimately pained admission of emotional limits: how the truthful artist looks at life clinically and formally, missing out on beloved, possibly, while seeing and then much more than. Sondheim expresses George's obsessive pursuit of pointillist perfection through arpeggiating musical phrases and repeated lyrics: vamping as metaphor for pigmented dots. More than only a portrait of a romantically challenged hero, the song speaks to anyone who's had trouble connecting or bonding with a lover.—David Cote
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4. "And I Am Telling Yous I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls (1981)
Even the championship is too much. Look how it goes on, awkwardly long, as though refusing to go away. This is the big Broadway song, peradventure the biggest: the i that just won't quit. Effie White has been rejected by her lover and her Motown-mode girl grouping, but she'due south non too proud to beg. The lower she sinks into abjection, she college she climbs upwards this mountain of a solo: Henry Krieger'due south music pushes her to soul extremes (maximized by original Effie Jennifer Holliday), while Tom Eyen'south lyrics lay her heart out to be trampled. "You're going to honey me," she insists, and even after she has been left alone onstage, she keeps repeating this futile demand in an aria of denial at present sung to no ane at all—except, perhaps, to her dressing-room mirror, and to u.s..—Adam Feldman
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5. "Some Enchanted Evening" from Southward Pacific (1949)
Good music is onomatopoeia in reverse: sound formed from, and hence transmitting, meaning. That'south certainly the example with this swoony mini-aria, which wraps a pro forma romantic message in a creamy musical envelope; even without Hammerstein'southward lyrics, typically delivered by an operatic baritone with a heavy European accent, Rodgers's melody conjures ephemeral intoxication. And lest this song's stand-solitary hit status and oddly speculative second-person vox ("You may see a stranger") make united states of america forget: When this honey bomb drops in South Pacific'southward get-go scene, it finer functions as a spousal relationship proposal. Who says no to that?—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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6. "Cabaret" from Cabaret (1966)
The seductively upbeat championship vocal of Cabaret exhorts listeners to loosen up, get down, live a trivial. Information technology seems like fun, merely there's a catch: Sung late in the testify by chanteuse and would-be star Sally Bowles in the waning years of Weimar Germany, John Kander and Fred Ebb's song is weighted with irony and desolation. Celebration ("life is a cabaret, old chum") slips into nihilism ("information technology'due south only a cabaret, old chum") every bit Sally—in a frantic rush of showbiz delusion—commits herself to a bullheaded, headlong hedonism that refuses to take anyone seriously, especially herself, even as the Nazi tide rises to her neck.—Adam Feldman
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vii. "Satisfied" from Hamilton (2015)
There are many structurally ingenious songs in the astounding score of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton—picking one was not easy—but "Satisfied" is particularly impressive. Sung past Angelica Schuyler (Renée Elise Goldsberry in the original cast), whose sister marries the championship character, it's a story told in flashback: The lyric is bookended by Angelica toasting the bride and groom on their hymeneals day, merely rewinds to the solar day she introduced them to each other. But the audience is privy to Angelica's inner calculation and regret that she cannot pursue the man she loves. On the show's cast album, produced by QuestLove, the fantastic sound layering and residue of FX versus instruments let you to dive inside a mind at war with itself. In a musical about ambition, genius and downfall, this song dramatizes with pulse-pounding immediacy a woman throwing away her shot.—David Cote
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8. "Losing My Heed" from Follies (1971)
In Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim modestly describes this trembling torch vocal as "less an homage to, than a theft of" George Gershwin's "The Homo I Love." Nevertheless, it has get one of his best-loved and about concertized tunes. While the melody is definitely reminiscent of Tin can Pan Aisle pop standards, the lyric is a masterpiece of psychological probing and terse, imagistic writing. In 26 lines of 109 words, Sondheim guides us through a solar day in the life of Sally Durant, former Follies girl, at present heart-anile and unhappily married. Verse by verse, we become from morn to afternoon and evening, each phase a snapshot of depression and so deep she's paralyzed: "Sometimes I stand / In the middle of the floor, / Not going left, / Not going right." The madness simile in the lyric is drama-queen hyperbole; Sally is romantically deluded, merely not clinically insane. Notwithstanding, for anyone who has suffered obsessive love or self-loathing, the song is unbearably raw. No surprise that generations of fans have lost their head over it.—David Cote
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9. "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Human being (1957)
Pundits take called this freeform, tongue-twisting sermon a precursor of rap. It was declaimed in The Music Man by con homo Harold Colina, a huckster who rolls into an Iowa hick town in 1912 with a scheme to rob it blind. He warns adults that their kids are turning into street-tough "cigarette fiends"—and that simply by paying him to class a marching band can morality exist saved. In his Tony-winning performance, preserved in the 1962 picture show, Robert Preston delivered this daredevil piece as nimbly as a racecar champ on a collision course.—James Gavin
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10. "Some Other Time" from On the Town (1944)
Later "I'll Be Seeing You," the most poignant of World War Two good day songs might well be "Some Other Fourth dimension." It comes from On the Town, a madcap musical about three sailors on 24-hour shore leave in Manhattan. One time the hijinks cease, two of the men and their short-term sweethearts look sadly at the clock and sing this ballad, written by Leonard Bernstein and Betty Comden and Adolph Light-green. Its message is eternal: "When you're in love, fourth dimension is precious stuff / Even a lifetime isn't enough."—James Gavin
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11. "A Footling Priest" from Sweeney Todd (1979)
Since we tin't include the unabridged score of Sweeney Todd, let this showtime-act finale serve as a synecdoche for Stephen Sondheim's Grand Guignol masterpiece. Rising out of the harrowing "Epiphany"—in which Sweeney vows to become a serial killer—"A Little Priest" finds his compatriot, Mrs. Lovett, suggesting that they recycle his victims as meat for her struggling pie shop. In a dazzlingly witty comic waltz, they muse about the kinds of people they might cook upwards ("shepherd'due south pie peppered with actual shepherd on summit"). Simply information technology's not only a mordant one-act number about cannibalism; information technology also serves as a character song, with the nattering Lovett set against the fulminating Sweeney, that pushes the plot forrard while touching on larger themes: "The history of the world, my sweet / Is who gets eaten and who gets to eat." Has wickedness e'er been quite then succulent? —Adam Feldman
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12. "Memory" from Cats (1982)
Much like the blockbuster prove it's from, "Memory" is one of those songs that people either love or loathe. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's tune is loosely inspired by various classical sources, and Trevor Nunn's melancholy lyrics draw from T.South. Eliot's poems. There's an undeniable chemical science in the combination, which has helped "Memory" transcend its Broadway roots. Y'all don't demand to exist a theater queen to know how to chugalug out the climax: "Touch me / Information technology's so easy to leave me / All alone with the memory / Of my days in the sun." Simply of course, information technology probably sounds a lot better when Betty Buckley does it.—Raven Snook
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xiii. "At that place's No Business organisation Like Show Business concern" from Annie Become Your Gun (1946)
Irving Berlin'southward high-stepping paean to entertainment has a cynical undercurrent: "Even with a turkey that you know will fold, you may be stranded out in the cold / Still you wouldn't modify information technology for a sack of gold." In the context of Annie Get Your Gun, members of Buffalo Bill's Wild Westward Evidence use the song to become Annie Oakley to bring together the troupe. (It'southward function of a kind of backstage subgenre, like Cole Porter's "Another Op'nin', Some other Show" and Pinocchio's "Howdy-Diddle-Dee-Dee.") The instantly catchy song is reprised three times and has passed into iconic status on phase and screen.—David Cote
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xiv. "Yous'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel (1945)
The best of Rodgers and Hammerstein's secular hymns had a dual purpose in its original setting: as grief counseling for newly widowed Julie Jordan later her husband's suicide, and as a climactic loftier school graduation canticle for their daughter. To meet both demands, Hammerstein contributed almost entirely monosyllabic lyrics and Rodgers banked his burn, keeping things folk-elementary until the title phrase, for which he unleashed a cloud-bursting chord per syllable. The song's repurposing has continued: It'south the official club canticle of Liverpool's football team.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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fifteen. "One Day More" from Les Misérables (1987)
At once a summary and a cliffhanger, the Act I finale of Les Miz offers a thrilling pinch of the musical'south epic narrative. In plow, viii primary characters sing melodies we've heard throughout the offset human action (notably as "Who Am I?," "I Dreamed a Dream" and "Master of the Firm"); then they sing them all at the same fourth dimension, in a counterpoint of clashing wills that converges into unison. With powerful strength, composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricists Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer sweep the show into a brawl and bung it out into intermission.—Adam Feldman
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16. "Big Spender" from Sweet Charity (1966)
In this steamy come-on, partners-for-rent in an old Times Foursquare dance hall attempt to squeeze some bucks out of the schlubs in omnipresence. The bump-and-grind stripper beat came from composer and jazz pianist Cy Coleman; Dorothy Fields provided the comically difficult-boiled words of seduction; and Bob Fosse gave the girls their slithery, syncopated moves. "Large Spender" portrays '60s New York every bit a sexed-up fast lane where dearest is for sale and the naïve—like the show'southward lovestruck lead character, Charity Hope Valentine—get clobbered.—James Gavin
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17. "Don't Rain on My Parade" from Funny Girl (1964)
There'south a reason this rousing power ballad is the closing number in both acts of the Fanny Brice biomusical. Cheers to Jule Styne's soaring melody and Bob Merrill's defiant, I'll-do-what-I-want lyrics, it's an iconic female person-empowerment anthem—despite the unlucky-in-love comedian'southward decision to run off with a gambling cad. Not that anyone could convince her to do otherwise: "Don't Pelting on My Parade" is Fanny'southward YOLO cry as she chases what her centre desires. The 22-year-old Barbra Streisand's scenic vocals on the original cast anthology accept inspired many a wannabe stage star, non to mention karaoke queens of all genders.—Raven Snook
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18. "Aquarius" from Pilus (1968)
For a musical purportedly running on hippie flower ability and gloopy starshine, it's striking that Hair's bookends are a pair of bad-ass pocket-size-key blues chorales: this funky, driving opener and the rafter-shaking closer "Let the Sunshine In." Wafting in like phase fog over a brooding organ and a siren-like wail of guitar feedback, "Aquarius" may proffer dubious astrology and peacenik platitudes (courtesy of lyricists James Rado and Gerome Ragni), only composer Galt MacDermot's churning, darkly tuneful music both grounds and elevates information technology.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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xix. "All That Jazz" from Chicago (1975)
Those high-pitched brass bursts! That tuba underscoring! The come-hither, babyish vocals past original star Chita Rivera, and Bebe Neuwirth's growlier take in the 1996 revival! This sexy yet sinister opening number brilliantly sets the mood for Chicago'southward darkly comic satire of the good ol' American goals of fame and fortune. You can't see Bob Fosse's legendary choreography on the cast recording, only somehow yous can feel it in the bump-and-grind of John Kander's jazzy melody and Fred Ebb'south suggestive lyrics, which conjure a sultry picture of an illicit night out on the town.—Raven Snook
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twenty. "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess (1935)
Despite the ear-splitting book with which most sopranos sing information technology, this standard is a lullaby, written by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward for their fabled folk opera nearly embattled blacks in the 1930s Deep South. "Summer" is a young mother's promise to the infant in her arms that "nothin' tin can harm you lot / So hush, little baby, don't you cry." Gershwin, a Brooklyn-born Jew, drew upon blues, spirituals and folk to compose a song so lushly melodic that he surprised fifty-fifty himself, and Stephen Sondheim has chosen Heyward'due south words "the best lyrics in the musical theater."—James Gavin
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21. "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof (1964)
Some theater songs are whole plays in miniature; that this is one of them peradventure shouldn't be surprising, as it'south based on a Sholem Aleichem folk tale that wasn't used for the show'due south main plot. Every bit such, it'south less an "I Desire" song than an "I Am" song—a wistful introduction non to the things that drive the poor milkman Tevye but to how he sees himself. Amidst the affectionate domestic sense of humor of Sheldon Harnick's lyrics is an insight that the original Tevye, Naught Mostel, insisted the writers keep: This is a homo whose ultimate idea of luxury is more than time to pray and read the Torah.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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22. "Ship in the Clowns" from A Fiddling Nighttime Music (1973)
Stephen Sondheim has expressed surprise that this rueful carol has become his all-time-known vocal across the Broadway world. Merely the piece has a cute balance of emotion and tact; in the brevity of its phrases, and the silence that follows them, lies a wealth of unspoken feeling. Sung by Desiree, an actress, the lyrics are suffused with show-business metaphor—"Making my entrance again with my usual flair, / Sure of my lines, / No 1 is there"—but "Send in the Clowns" is resolutely unshowy. In the context of A Little Night Music, which teems with wickedly fast and clever verbiage (as in "The Miller's Son" and "A Weekend in the Land"), the song's dull, simple, biting simplicity makes it stand out all the more than.—Adam Feldman
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23. "Lot's Married woman" from Caroline, or Change (2004)
This stunning 11-o'clock number would be overwhelming if it all weren't so conspicuously and forcefully laid out by librettist Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori. Caroline, an embittered blackness maid who has squabbled over pocket modify with the young son of the Jewish family unit she serves, wrenchingly weighs her complicity in her own misery. She tears through shifting meters and styles, presses words through multiple meanings—"Pocket change change me," a climactic cry of "Flat!" that piles spiritual and musical connotations onto her hot atomic number 26—and reaches a kind of truce with her ain rage.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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24. "This evening" from W Side Story (1957)
Even haters can't stop their hearts from melting when they hear this gorgeous, lilting love song, as star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria make like Romeo and Juliet on a tenement burn down escape. Leonard Bernstein'due south classically tinged tune and Stephen Sondheim's poetic lyrics capture the all-encompassing rapture of teen romance. You can't aid feeling invigorated (and, perhaps, envious). Westward Side Story's complex first-act finale expands the song into a stunning, operatic quintet that allows all of the musical'due south protagonists to vocalization their hopes and impending plans, in a masterful combination of music and dramaturgy.—Raven Snook
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25. "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys And Dolls (1950)
Among Frank Loesser's many great gifts every bit a songwriter was his ability—like Dorothy Fields, Sheldon Harnick and Howard Ashman—to craft comic character songs that remain warm, endearing and funny decades afterwards. In "Adelaide's Complaining," a sneezy showgirl, whose mobster boyfriend won't commit to marrying her, processes the clinical language of a medical textbook ("psychosomatic symptoms…affecting the upper respiratory tract") into mutual talk: "In other words, just from waiting around for that little band of gold / A person tin can develop a cold." Her boyfriend's fear of commitment is literally making her sick.—Adam Feldman
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26. "I Got Rhythm" from Girl Crazy (1930)
This frantic, jazz-age weep of glee made Ethel Merman a star. Her bugle voice was all brassy brightness as she belted its cheerful refrain: "I got rhythm / I got music / I got my man / Who could ask for anything more?" The plot of its parent musical, Girl Crazy, is lame—a gaggle of New York entertainers are recruited to perform on an Arizona dude ranch—but George Gershwin felt he'd never written a better vocal. Its hip chord changes would after be used as the basis for countless bebop tunes. —James Gavin
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27. "Defying Gravity" from Wicked (2003)
The first bang-up 21st century power ballad on Broadway, Wicked's Human action I finale is well-nigh scientifically engineered to succeed. In just under six minutes, Stephen Schwartz ruptures the friendship between Elphaba and Galinda; gives his green-skinned heroine a personal epiphany in which she owns her otherness; and sends her freaking flying as she sings a crazy series of high notes on stage machinery. We tin can't wait for interruption to be over so nosotros tin run into what happens side by side to our geektastic antihero. Since the 1970s, Schwartz has been the bard of the wide-eyed aspirational escapist, and "Defying Gravity" is the zenith of that "Corner of the Sky" vibe. Gracefully orchestrated by William David Brohn, arranged by Alex Lacamoire and Stephen Oremus and sung to blatant-brassy perfection past role originator Idina Menzel, this is belty self-empowerment at its finest.—David Cote
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28. "Glitter And Be Gay" from Candide (1956)
This ain't no vocal, kids; it's an aria. Although opera and its ditsy younger sister, operetta, are in the DNA of the Broadway musical, most prove-tune vocalizing is more a affair of brass and volume than beautifully shaped notes. In this comic showstopper from Leonard Bernstein's Candide, set to trippingly witty lyrics by Richard Wilbur, a Broadway diva with classical chops gets to strut her coloratura. Bernstein flirts with Mozartean pyrotechnics, specially in the stratospheric trilling of the "ha ha ha" section. In terms of content, the number'due south a campy diva brew-up of lament and ostentation. Our damsel Cunegonde has turned upward in Paris, where she lives the bejeweled and sparkling life of a pampered courtesan. The great soprano Barbara Cook originated the role in the prime of her career, just the song has shone brilliantly in the easily of Madeline Kahn and Kristin Chenoweth, too.—David Cote
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29. "Ring of Keys" from Fun Home (2015)
A neat theater song goes places, but few travel as unexpectedly far and deep as this ebullient epiphany from the musical version of Alison Bechdel's memoir. The showtime trip is back in time, as 43-year-old Alison recalls her x-year-quondam cocky admiring a butch lesbian at a diner; merely the vocal's real journey is the steep inwards dive inspired by her shock of recognition. Lisa Kron's lyric judiciously balances childlike precocity with stereotype-costless retrospect, as Jeanine Tesori's music spins subtly swelling cartwheels underneath, merely the genius motion is to leave blank space for young Alison to literally think out loud: "I feel…" and "I want...to...." and "I...um…" Into these spaces a whole heart, and a lifetime, can blitz.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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30. "Bugged, Bothered and Bewildered" (a.k.a. "Bugged") from Pal Joey (1940)
No character on Broadway was ever so glad to be had every bit Vera Simpson, the married, over-40 socialite in this Rodgers & Hart milestone. Vera loses her head over sexy cad Joey, a ii-chip hoofer and wannabe club owner who but excels in the sack. Vera sizes him up in the showstopping "Bewitched," and decides that it's a win-win. Lorenz Hart turned sexual obsession into a feast of self-skewering wit, virtuoso rhyming and saucy innuendo. "He's a laugh simply I love it," sings Vera, "Because the laugh's on me."—James Gavin
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31. "My Ship" from Lady in the Dark (1941)
Lady in the Dark may be dated—manner-magazine editor Liza Elliot undergoes Freudian psychoanalysis, illustrated in extended dream sequences—but it ought to be revived on the strength of the score. This dreamy little gem is the final number, and immediately recognizable as a Kurt Weill composition: the wistful, almost mournful opening notes, the jazzy swing, the sweetness shading into menace. Ira Gershwin penned the elegant lyrics, which utilise brilliant nautical imagery to depict a richly stocked vessel that Liza hopes will also convey her "own true love." Gertrude Lawrence was start to play Liza and her plummy recording is enchanting, simply singers such as Sarah Vaughan, Judy Garland and Dawn Upshaw take likewise piloted this pretty bawl.—David Cote
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32. "Totally Fucked" from Spring Awakening (2006)
In context it's a cri de coeur of adolescent malaise, only Duncan Sheik's guitar-heavy groove and Steven Sater'due south profanity-filled lyrics take an uncanny way of tapping into whatever anger you're feeling and helping you lot allow it out, regardless of your age. The climactic, gloriously harmonized chanting of "blah blah blah apathetic blah apathetic blah blah" is cathartic no matter what yous're going through; I listened to this rock 'n' coil rant on echo for three days afterwards the 2016 presidential election.—Raven Snook
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33. "At the Ballet" from A Chorus Line (1975)
In the long-running A Chorus Line, dancing is a lifesaver and a reason for being; an audition for a spot in a Broadway ensemble is a chance to feel accustomed at final. "At the Ballet" introduces u.s. to three young women who grew up feeling homely, unloved or both; the ballet was an haven of "svelte men and lovely girls in white," a place where "everything was beautiful." Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban's vocal has spoken to endless lost souls.—James Gavin
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34. "Seasons of Honey" from Hire (1996)
This hauntingly beautiful ballad is delivered directly to the audience at the summit of Human action Ii, as a motley crew of artists afflicted by AIDS steps downstage and out of the story to ask, "How do yous measure a year?" The song movingly evokes tragic losses both onstage and off—and especially the unexpected death of Rent creator Jonathan Larson, at age 35, on the forenoon of the show'due south first Off Broadway preview. It's impossible to divorce this vocal from that sad fact, which simply makes its message of the importance of love more potent.—Raven Snook
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35. "The Incommunicable Dream" from Human being of La Mancha (1965)
The term anthem gets thrown around a lot when describing Broadway songs (present list included). Unremarkably it'southward autograph for any ditty that has a simple merely memorable melody and lyrics that inspire. "The Impossible Dream" is a prime example, sung by the deluded but chivalric Don Quixote when asked past peasant hottie Aldonza about this "quest" he keeps referring to. Joe Darion's crisp, pulsing lyrics are imbued with lofty, knightly ideals ("To right the unrightable wrong / To love pure and chaste from afar") and Mitch Leigh's stately, martial music builds to a satisfyingly righteous climax. "Dream" is also one of those songs that work quite well exterior its original context. Its underdog-fighting-the-arrangement sentiment is potent enough to crusade a lump in your throat, whatever your political stripe.—David Cote
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36. "Lost in the Stars" from Lost in the Stars (1949)
Apartheid South Africa was the grim setting for Kurt Weill'southward terminal musical, with book and lyrics past Pulitzer Prize winner Maxwell Anderson. The title song became a ceremonious-rights anthem, though not a hopeful i. In "Lost in the Stars," a black priest looks at the shattered lives around him and wonders if "perhaps God'south gone away." Todd Duncan, the original Porgy in Porgy and Bess, introduced this stirring spiritual; since and then it's become an all-purpose cry of abandonment in an unforgiving universe.—James Gavin
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37. "Some other Hundred People" from Company (1970)
Company is about relationships—those of its hero, Robert, who can't commit to ane woman until his large romantic epiphany in "Being Alive." And all the same Stephen Sondheim's "Another Hundred People" is a wide-angle song, an observational ode to disconnection and anonymity in the big urban center: so many bodies, so little connection. In it, people are seen every bit ants scurrying on and off buses, subways and planes. Is the sentiment dated? Not really. We still alive in "a city of strangers," as the lyric cuttingly observes, and toys such as Tinder and Twitter have not done much to banish isolation. Jonathan Tunick's colorful orchestration (bank check out that groovy synth) deepens the desolation and adds hopefulness to what is essentially a meditation on urban anomie.—David Cote
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38. "Suddenly Seymour" from Little Shop of Horrors (2003)
"Lift up your head," sings nebbishy florist Seymour to his coworker Audrey at the start of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's soaring love duet. "Wipe off your mascara." They're imperatives, but he's not bossing her around like the creeps she's been fatigued to in the past; he'due south nurturing her and supporting her, like a gardener, to let her grow. And it works: Audrey begins the song tentatively but ends in an explosive stone belt (immortalized in Ellen Greene's original 1982 Off Broadway functioning)—the sound of love and self-esteem bursting into long-suppressed bloom.—Adam Feldman
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39. "Something Wonderful" from The Male monarch and I (1951)
Open-hearted, earnest Oscar Hammerstein II could be underrated in the indirection department. After all, he gave this strange, and strangely moving, pep-talk anthem to a supporting character, Lady Thiang, at a pivotal bespeak in the impasse between Anna and the King, the bear witness's quasi-romantic leads. Equally she lauds her husband-monarch'south fickle, flickering greatness, with a mix of damning faint praise and sincere special pleading, she somehow makes Anna—and usa—experience information technology. It doesn't hurt that Richard Rodgers rose majestically to the occasion, crafting a monumental, angular musical portrait of the vocal'due south offstage subject.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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40. "I Am What I Am" from La Cage Aux Folles (1983)
Arguably the ultimate gay Broadway canticle—helped in function past dance diva Gloria Gaynor'southward popular cover—"I Am What I Am" was groundbreaking when information technology debuted: a poignant paean to self-love, cocky-invention and self-acceptance, performed past a drag-queen graphic symbol and written past gay composer-lyricist Jerry Herman. It'south a commemoration of being out, loud and proud, written years earlier marriage equality and gender-neutral bathrooms became political movements. If the lyrics don't stir your soul, the multiple modulations should do the fox.—Raven Snook
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41. "Don't Weep For Me, Argentina" from Evita (1979)
The common people of 1940s Argentine republic, the descamisados, take been clamoring for her. But when their new first lady, Eva Perón, appears on the balcony of the Presidential Palace, she temporarily quiets them with a song. Like Shakespeare's Richard Iii, Eva makes a smashing testify of non wanting power, the ameliorate to solidify it. Therein lies the song'due south central tension: Tim Rice'southward lyric about humility—cry for me, here, ways telephone call my proper name, not shed tears (which will come later)—is gear up to Andrew Lloyd Webber'southward lushest and grandest music in the bear witness.—Adam Feldman
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42. "Maybe" from Annie (1977)
It's not an incessantly optimistic earworm like Annie'south other big solo hit, "Tomorrow," but that'due south to its do good. More than emotionally nuanced, "Peradventure" dares to let the precocious orphan face up her worst fears; she may be voicing a misty fantasy about her long-lost parents, but its very championship implies that she knows it's a pipe dream. Martin Charnin's heart-tugging lyrics are complemented past Charles Strouse's contemplative, meandering melody, certain to spark nostalgia in whatever listener who'south lost something they can't get back.—Raven Snook
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43. "Hello, Dolly" from Howdy, Dolly! (1964)
This is maybe the greatest star-entrance song always—even if it does accept identify midway through Act II. Jerry Herman's championship tune is decidedly former-fashioned, in part because the show takes place in 1880s New York and was written in the early 1960s, simply also because he's a master at penning Golden Historic period of Broadway–style hits. Although Ballad Channing, with her signature rasp, made the tune famous onstage, it was Louis Armstrong'southward even raspier version that earned the song international acclaim and a 1965 Grammy Award for Song of the Yr.—Raven Snook
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44. "People Will Say Nosotros're in Dear" from Oklahoma! (1943)
Musical theater's version of the screwball comedy trope of the Lovers Who Can't See They're in Honey—the "Of Form I'm Not in Love with Yous (Still)" vocal—has many fine exemplars (Carousel'south "If I Loved You," Brigadoon's "Well-nigh Like Being in Beloved," Guys and Dolls'south "I'll Know"). But few are as witty, playfully reciprocal and, yes, sexy as this scrap of romantic gamesmanship, which features i of Richard Rodgers's almost felicitously constructed and artfully ornamented tunes. (Listen for the sly inversion of notes on "Don't throw" and "Don't start.")—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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45. "If He Walked into My Life Today" from Mame (1966)
A powerful showstopper about the challenges of motherhood, sung by a character who never had kids of her own, Mame'southward tearjerking 11-o'clock number finds the show'south eccentric, bohemian heroine questioning everything she did wrong (and correct) in raising her at present-grown nephew. Jerry Herman's lush, romantic melody is cleverly contrasted with his introspective lyrics, beautiful articulated by Angela Lansbury, who originated the office on Broadway. Her consummate interpretation of the song and the role may explain why the musical hasn't been mounted on the Principal Stem in more years, though many fans think information technology's ripe for some other go-round.—Raven Snook
46. "Annihilation Goes" from Anything Goes (1934)
Cole Porter wrote more than his share of durable melodies, but his true metier was arguably this kind of brittle, urbane word jazz, a kind of proto-hip-hop in which rhythmic catamenia and rhyming invention were everything. Though his original lyrics, full of wicked references to scandals and contretemps of his day, have frequently been censored or substituted with less topical variants, a listen to his demo reveals that it isn't arrangers or interpreters who've made Porter's standards rock: The high-wire syncopations, feints and sheer brass are all built into the original model.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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47. "Anybody's a Little Chip Racist" from Avenue Q (2003)
Comedy songs don't get a lot of respect in best-of lists. Simply composer-lyricists Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx took a song almost casual racism and whipped it into an up-tempo, feel-proficient lesson song about accepting your inner bigot. The music, like a lot of Avenue Q, riffs off the child-friendly sound of Sesame Street, while the lyrics sit perfectly on the bouncy line: "If nosotros all could but admit that we are racist a lilliputian bit / And everyone stopped being then P.C. / Perhaps we could alive in harmony." Sweetly satirical and genuinely funny, the song pokes fun at African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Jews, Mexicans and oh, aye, monsters. We've come a long way from "You Have to Be Carefully Taught."—David Cote
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48. "Whatever Lola Wants" from Damn Yankees (1955)
The national pastime took on a Satanic twist in Damn Yankees, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross's musical almost an older married man who trades his soul for the chance to go the baseball game star of his dreams. When he gets cold feet, the devil sends a gangling temptress, Lola (played by Gwen Verdon), to proceed him in check. She entices him with this throbbing tango. "Whatever Lola Wants" was torrid stuff for '50s Broadway; Verdon'southward future married man, choreographer Bob Fosse, turned up the heat by having her writhe around the object of her seduction like the snake in the Garden of Eden.—James Gavin
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49. "Wouldn't Information technology Be Loverly" from My Fair Lady (1956)
The kickoff act of Shaw'southward Pygmalion ends with Cockney bloom seller Eliza Doolittle indulging in the luxury of a cab ride habitation to her Drury Lane digs.My Fair Lady's first scene ends similarly, but not before she imagines—in this jaunty, syncopated minuet, one of many seemingly effortless, ageless gems in Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe'south score—earthly comforts so pocket-size (estrus, chocolate, a chair) that the song would be heartbreaking if not for its warm grin. It's the "I Want" vocal of someone with little reason to believe she'll attain information technology, and information technology'southward all the sweeter for information technology.—Rob Weinert-Kendt
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l. "Ease on Downwards the Road" from The Wiz (1975)
The Wizard of Oz got a funky overhaul in The Wiz, the all-black Best Musical of 1975. The melody that fabricated it a hit was "Ease on Down the Road," composer Charlie Smalls's soul-disco spin on "Follow the Xanthous Brick Route." Throughout the show, Dorothy chants information technology with the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion while they shuck and jive their fashion to Oz. As the indignities pile up, this song is their upbeat anthem of endurance and brotherhood.—James Gavin
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Source: https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/best-broadway-songs-of-all-time
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