12 Broadway Cast Recordings That Have Changed Our Lives Forever

...says the author of this article. https://medium.com/broadway-live/10-cast-recordings-that-changed-our-lives-forever-a129944b7329#.6dcjkkdmy Let the disagreeing begin!

This article should have been titled 12 Cast Recordings That Changed My Life.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't like The Color Purple at all. I think the singing and performances are fine, but the score is just so....blah.

Agree with 5 of them . Some of the choices are a bit odd.

By the way, cannot say any cast album actually changed my life no matter how much I enjoyed it.

Either way it's misleading.

I think it's a good list. If the title of the article matched the URL as "12 Cast Recordings That Changed Our Lives Forever," I think the list would warrant a little more backlash. Either way, it's a list of someone's preferred recordings. It's not definitve in any way. I think all of the choices on the list are good ways to introduce people into the world of musical theater, in that most of the albums on the list have diverse sounds and merge into different mainstream genres of music, rather than just sounding like brassy, classic shows. Also remember that everyone has different life experiences. An album that may speak to you and change your life, will not necessarily affect your neighbor in the same way, because they have a different life and different stories to relate to. That being said, 7 of the 12 albums on that list greatly affected me when I first listened to them. Nice to see some love for Songs For A New World!

Since when does a show have to be a hit to change a life?

jasonf said: "Maybe it's just me, but I don't like The Color Purple at all. I think the singing and performances are fine, but the score is just so....blah. "

Check out the new revival and the cast recording when it comes out. I think it's quite an underrated score. I think it took ten years for people (myself included) to recognize how beautiful and varied the score is. Kind of shocking that the generic score of Drowsy beat it, but TCP wasn't fully appreciated as a piece at that time. This revival has changed many opinions.

Updated On: 1/11/16 at 12:38 PM

The title of the piece is actually "12 Cast Recordings That Will Change Your Life." Significantly different.

Not that it matters, but I don't much agree with the list; it's for people of a very specific age and aesthetic point of view. I never found the score for Songs for a New World to be particularly interesting - music of a generic lite-theatre-pop sound, and lyrics that hew closely to a moody adolescent poetry. And I agree with the opinion voiced above about the score for The Color Purple; it's difficult to believe that it took three people to create such awful meaningless-to-cliched lyrics, and such bland music. The powerful story (and audiences' familiarity with it) was what helped that show to achieve a modest 2-year run. I'm also no fan of the scores for Aida, The Last 5 Years, or Spring Awakening, primarily because I find them to be non-theatrical, with tenuous links to story or character (mostly). And to choose the Doyle recording of Company over the original is just mystifying to me.

As noted, it's mostly a list for a 30-something audience, I think, more interested in listening to nonspecific pop music than to character/situation-specific theatre music.

Following Kad's lead, my list would be (ALL original cast, no revivals, and 10 is enough):

Little Shop of Horrors

March of the Falsettos

Company

Follies

West Side Story

Gypsy

A Little Night Music

Chicago

Anyone Can Whistle

Nine

Updated On: 1/11/16 at 12:58 PM

"Little Shop of Horrors (OOBC): First CD I ever bought with my own money, first musical I saw multiple times, and the score continues to bring me joy whenever I hear it."

YES!!! That's exactly how I feel about that show! Had the pleasure of seeing Ellen Greene in the Encores production of it last summer and that just added to the magic of what I already felt for that show. It was also the first show I ever saw and one of my favorite movies growing up.

If I had to put together a list of shows that changed my life, my list would go something like this (no particular order)

Little Shop - First show I ever saw.

Annie -OBC - Don't judge. I'm Mexican and Annie was HUGE when my mom was growing up, so she drilled that soundtrack into my brain as a child. Also, Hannigan is such a well-written character.

Rent - This was probably the first "adult" musical I listened to. That original cast was so incredible, so much energy on one recording!

A Chorus Line - OBC - no explanation required.

Wicked - I've always loved Stephen Schwartz and this album happened to come into my life right after I came out to my mom and her initial reaction was unexpected and upsetting, had me feeling like the Wicked Witch of the West. No Good Deed was played over and over again for a long, long time.

Gypsy (OBC) - My first exposure to Ethel Merman.

Sweeney Todd (OBC) - This score still blows my mind, listening to it the first time was dizzying.

Of course, I'm sitting here having trouble remembering or listing half the musicals that changed my life, but there are more! Looking over my list above, I think these are more or less the shows that really influenced me growing up and that led to my love of musical theater.

Updated On: 1/11/16 at 01:09 PM

(cough) Hamilton...? (cough)