Posted: 8/25/15 at 10:25pm
Even more of my favorite scores since 2000:
Love Never Dies (I've never really understood why people took a crap on the show as originally conceived, because I personally think the music and story as laid out originally works far better than what they ended up with after heavily revising things, particularly in terms of the show serving as a worthy follow-up to Phantom. Both Ramin and Sierra are far better as Christine and the Phantom here than they are on the 25th Anniversary Albert Hall recording of Phantom [IMO, anyway], and I'd also stack songs like Devil Take the Hindmost, Dear Old Friend, Look with Your Heart, the aforementioned The Beauty Underneath, Love Never Dies, and 'Til I Hear You Sing up against the best songs from Phantom any day of the week)
In the Heights (I found the score to In the Heights after listening to the 2009 Broadway Revival recording of West Side Story and being really intrigued by the changes that were made, particularly the inclusion of Spanish lyrics by one Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the Heights strikes me as being West Side Story modernized, and the performances by Mr. Miranda and the rest of the cast really help set the stage for the intimately personal journey that unfolds over the course of the musical's story, especially on songs like "In the Heights", "Breathe", "Patencia y Fe", "Sunrise", and "When the Sun Goes Down" 
Updated On: 8/27/15 at 10:25 PM
