So I have just stumbled upon the albums discussed in this thread tonight while looking for the new Annie soundtrack on iTunes, and I instead discovered something greater. I was a little surprised that the OP of this thread had the exact same thought as I: the version of Tomorrow from the Annie in this outrageous series of seemingly ilegal recordings sounds straight out of Flashdance. I listened to the preview a few times out of sheer horror and then again because I thought the lady actually had a pretty good 1980's pop voice. Why is There's No Business Like Show Business on the album? I guess Irving Berlin was popular during the depression.
I listened to a preview or two from most of the albums on the list, some terrifying me with their utter lack of talent and a few entertaining me with their utter lack of regard to good taste and a sense of what is right and wrong in musical theater on the whole. Most of the highlights were discussed on this same thread in 2009 but they are all still true five years later: Fantine is played by a man, Javert doesn't really know how to scan lyrics, Maureen is terribly underpitch, the cover art is particularly horrendous especially for the Lion King, Little Shop of Horrors, High Society and the Boy Friend.
The girl playing Eliza Doolittle was actually pretty good on I Could Have Danced All Night and girl playing Christine Daae wasn't terrible. Pretty much everyone else I heard was a disaster just waiting for a trainwreck to be a part of.
Fun bonus: the itunes reviewers are hilarious in their ineptitude to smell a scam, I assume most of them were straight though, because gays would never even think of buying off-brand musical cast recordings.
Mama Mia indeed.
"Contentment, it seems, simply happens. It appears accompanied by no bravos and no tears."
