Best Song From 2014-2015 Season

Why doesnt broadway have the award for best song of the season?

(can be ANY song from the current recent season, from an original composition, a jukebox or revival)

This is a super savvy board, so what are your five nominees and winner for the 2014-2015 broadway season (same eligible shows as for Tonys)

Mine from this season are:

Ring of Keys-Fun Home

A Musical-Something Rotten

Shall We Dance-The King & I

Love and Love Alone-The Visit

Hard to be the Bard-Something Rotten

my winner-Ring of Keys

It's Ring of Keys. Just Ring of Keys. Simple.

playbill use to do the playbill yearbook and had all that

NOMINEES

'Changing My Major', Fun Home

'I Love Betsy', Honeymoon in Vegas

'Love and Love Alone', The Visit

'Ring of Keys', Fun Home

'Welcome to the Renaissance', Something Rotten!

WINNER

'Ring of Keys' is an easy winner by a landslide.

I dont really think putting old songs in with the new is really fair. But my favorite performances from revivals are:

'I Can Cook Too', On the Town

'I Will Never Leave You', Side Show

'Shall We Dance', The King and I

Winter - The Visit

1. Telephone Wire

2. Days and Days

3. Flying Away

4. Ring of Keys

wait..... I've watched all shows on Broadway last season except "Holler If You Hear Me" and yet all I can remember by heart are the songs from "Fun Home" (well those and "Musical" from SR but that was more of a visual treat than a fantastic song).... I guess Fun Home was, by far, the best musical of the past two seasons.

The score of The Last Ship.

"Why doesnt broadway have the award for best song of the season?"

Because the whole idea of musical theater is to have a good overall score, not just one good song. Oof.

"The score of The Last Ship.

"Why doesnt broadway have the award for best song of the season?"
Because the whole idea of musical theater is to have a good overall score, not just one good song. Oof. "

hi neonlights

I love that the best broadway scores tell an entire story in a very seamless and integrated way(Sondheim of course being the master if this)

a great song also can tell an entire story within the story

and

one truly great song can make an entire musical or even a tony winning best musical (like for "Once")

If broadway composers placed a little more focus on writing truly great and memorable individual songs within a score that could stand alone as hit songs or at least garnish high volumes of youtube and social media plays, more shows would probably play much longer with bigger audiences....

i still believe having best song in a musical is a great idea and would help further musical theater.

hi hoganshero

I can dare to dream cant I?

one of the underlying reasons for this post is I COMPLETELY agree with you ( and read your posts whenever you do post because i respect your opinions), that this was not a great season for scores in general or memorable songs....

I loved a few of the new shows with original songs, including FH and SR, but I do not have songs from either cast album on my favorite musical songs playlist

I think you are right, we may be in for a rich 2015-16 season of new shows and Im excited about Hamilton, Waitress, Up here ( if it makes it this season) and others....

shouldn't great musicals have great music and songs?

Besides the score to Fun Home which has several greats, I'd have to add "Show Some Respect" from The Last Ship. Love the song, loved the choreography, thought it should have been a showstopper.

@ broadwaysfguy: "shouldn't great musicals have great music and songs?"

you bet. But if the focus shifts to songs instead of storytelling, musicals fail. The trick is to write great scores that have broader appeal. Then the youtube hits etc will follow on their own. Right now, even the most successful songs from cast recordings are just a footnote on billboard, spotify, youtube, grammys etc. When there have been exceptions in this century (21 guns), the way they have been shoehorned into shows demonstrates the point.

First of all, that "advance the plot" nonsense isn't from the critics; it is a silly BMI canard. Secondly, while it is obviously true that there are some songs that do not really works as standalone pieces, there are many that would, if they were (a) good enough, (b) accessible and (c) resonant. The problem is that there is never going to be mainstream appeal for songs that are rooted in a style that appeals to grandparents. Grandparents don't buy music much, and there are not enough hardcore oldschool musical theatre fans to make most of the mediocrity that traffics as musical theatre songs into hits. Unless and until musical theatre songs regularly sound popular again, it will be the rare, rare exception for a song that crosses over.

I agree about some of those songs, but it is a chicken and egg thing-someone has to pull out the stops to try. Could and might Hamilton? Perhaps; it is groundbreaking in so many ways, it could add this one. But it is one thing to make a push and another to have it succeed. Many try, few do.

I think it because the best songwriters have, for the most part, been unwelcome on Broadway for decades until fairly recently. That's changing and hopefully this situation will fix itself. It is not a quick process, but we are evolving from where things were (Jason Robert Brown, Andrew Lippa, etc) to a point where aging rockers (Lauper, Sting, etc) started writing shows and now we are finally seeing some legit contemporary songwriters (Duncan Sheik, Sara Bareilles) come into these treacherous waters. The next step is to gain respect-how about a song that's actually on the grammys instead of in the "and also receiving a grammy" category? Recuperating from 50+ years of exile doesn't happen overnight.