What's the best song from "Sunset Blvd."??? — Page 2

This show has more annoying recitative than any show I know of (other than Aspects of Love, of course).

That said, I think the best song in the show is As If We Never Said Goodbye (though the melody was recycled from Half a Moment), but With One Look and Sunset Boulevard are also pretty good.


This is definitely one show where a highlights disc is plenty for me, though of course I have two full recordings of the entire damn thing instead. da DAH da da da, DAH da da (repeat ad nauseum)

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I am obsessed with the title song, it is so haunting! I LOVE IT!

Wait, wait, wait. EMma Williams as in the Emma who was in Bat Boy? Was there a LEGAL DVD of this made?


And, I love Too Much In Love To Care with Judy Kuhn and Alan Cambell, but I haven't heard others, so... I mean, I've heard other songs, I love the whole show, but not other performers.

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the title song

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i like "eternal youth is worth a little suffering" and "surrender"

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With One look
As if we never said goodbye
Sunset Boulevard
The Lady's Paying

The BBC concert would have been perfect if it weren't for Petula Clark croaking her way through the score. Emma Williams was fantastic as always I agree that the last scene can be spine-chilling. In the UK tour there was a projection on a scrim and a filmed insert of Norma on the stairs was projected over the 'real' scene behind, zooming in on her eyes during her final lines

And there is an OLCR of Jeeves from the 70's, but as it flopped and was later re-worked, it's not widely available.

Too Much In Love To Care

and i agree the Emma Williams-Michael Ball version is the best,i was lucky enough to see it in Cork and it was even better than it came over on the radio
Musicals Chat!!

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Oh,

I’ve read over the thread now. You’re talking about Lloyd Webber recycling his melodies. Well, when he’s not taking from others (as disparate as Puccini to Pink Floyd) he’s doing it himself…

It’s really funny to review it. Any Dream Will Do was a song that Lloyd Webber and Rice composed for Herman’s Hermits. It was called “I Fancy You” and, of course, it was never recorded and went into the drawers for a kids musical. “Kansas Morning”, a single for one of Rice’s clients in the 60s, became I Don’t Know how to Love him. Rice’s original lyrics included such lines as “I Love the Kansas Morning. Kansas on my Brain. I’m back in Maine…” which really surprised me: because you can see how a beautiful melody can be made or broken by its lyrics. I’m glad it became what it did.

King Herod’s Song was “Try it and See” in a Eurovision contest (and even used that title, in brackets, for the American release of the Superstar concept album). It was also “Saladin Days” in a musical that Rice and Lloyd Webber only produced once: Come Back Richard Your Country Needs You. The start of Potiphar, on the older Joseph albums, has the same music that appears in Superstar as “Why do you not speak when I hold your life in my hands…” in the Trial Before Pilate scene. “Give me my Colored Coat” is, like, from a horn solo in a lost Lloyd Webber single: which is really strange that he even remembers it: he has to turn around and put it in a kids musical LOL

“Sunset Boulevard,” the title song itself, is the most notorious one. It was originally on a Maynard Williams album, can’t remember the title, and it was both a theme in Lloyd Webber’s film scores of GUMSHOE and THE ODESSA FILE. Lloyd Webber claims he wrote it for Sunset all along, but that could be a lie to save his ass. A lot of JEEVES was resurrected over time: Unexpected Song was “Literary Men” in Jeeves (not on the album, and, I think, cut in the previews) and Half a Moment DOES lend itself to As if we Never Said Goodbye. I haven’t fully heard Jeeves, either version released, so I’m not sure what else has been used over time: but I do know that there’s a lot of THE LIKES OF US, which has always been the main source Andy’s been re-using for years and years.

There’s a stack of stuff in Evita that was on older albums, namely High Flying Adored (as “Down on the Farm” LOL, or an excised song from “Jeeves” – when Rice was lyricist) and Buenos Aires (“The Red Room” and the first Rice – Lloyd Webber single “Down Through Summer” – the bit with “and when I need a moment’s rest…” which is the entire “Summer” song). Apparently Another Suitcase is “Summer Day,” a lost song from Jeeves, but I’ve never heard it. And I don’t think many other people have either. “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” had a huge issue over its title, and was originally called “It’s Only Your Lover Returning” and (get this LOL) “All Through my Wild and my Mad Days…” THANKFULLY to become what it is today…

Memory is apparently from an opera about Puccini and Leoncavallo’s race to complete an opera they were both working on. Lloyd Webber played it in the CATS rehearsals and the rest is history. Song and Dance had a heap of stuff: but it’s too complicated and time-consuming to go into: but it’s nothing major anyway. Starlight Express, not sure. Never cared enough to find out. REQUIEM, not sure either…

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: “THIS” is very interesting. Lloyd Webber and Nunn collaborated on an ASPECTS OF LOVE cabaret in 1983: which included a bulk of stuff which was too dark and gothic, and wound up in PHANTOM. The most namely is MARRIED MAN, which Sarah Brightman recorded with the London Philharmonic (about a woman who has an affair and sings a great song about it). Because it, ironically, was intended for release around Sarah 1 and Lloyd Webber’s break-up, it was advised never to be released. The tune became THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT… and God knows if the original will ever be released. ALL I ASK OF YOU was “I Don’t Talk to Strangers,” a REALLY obvious RECYCLE: since it was on a Placido Domingo album! WITH LYRICS BY TIM RICE!

CRICKET was practically raided for the present ASPECTS OF LOVE, and HALF A MOMENT was recycled into one of its songs; which then went into SUNSET LOL. And I think Lloyd Webber used a lot of LIKES OF US and CRICKET in BEAUTIFUL GAME, but not in Whistle (that didn’t have a lot at all, except ENGLISH GIRLS from the American Song and Dance). It gets very convoluted to describe all this.

Lloyd Webber is CONSTANTLY recycling his own material, when he’s not pinching others (i.e. Pink Floyd’s Echoes, Puccini, Come to me Bend to Me). Jim Steinman is even worse; a lot of the stuff in Dance of the Vampires is from lost musicals over 30 years old: or successful albums he did that were never released in the States.

I always found it funny how a writer would get his face kicked in if he tried something like this, but a composer gets away with blue bloody murder

That’s my 2 cents at least.

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While Betty's voice grates on me to no end, I found her strangely appealing in the role of Norma.

Listening to the cd put out for her appearance in the B'way production brings tears to my eye every time (from emotion - not splitting ear drums). Particularly her absolutely spooky renditions of "Surrender" and "New Ways To Dream"...

Unfortunately, I think the reason I find her so good in the role of Norma is that she is really just being herself, it isn't much of a stretch for her to be a faded drama queen. She is just *way* too emotional about that darned chimp - nobody can fake that kind of monkey love.

"Next Time..." of STARLIGHT and "...Billy McCaw" of CATS are the same melody. It has been altered a bit (not much though) and the rhythm and tempo are a bit different. But it is the same melody. Just listen to the opening lines of these songs "Oh, how well I remember the old..." and "I guess I'm not too good at..." and then the parts "...And Billy'd strike up on his moly guitar" and "Next time you fall in love" and you'll see.

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME has a song which was first performed by Kiri Te Kanawa as "The Heart Is Slow To Learn" in ALW's 50th birthday gala performance which took place in the Royal Albert Hall in London. If you get your hands on the dvd of that gala performance you'll hear this wonderful version, which later was changed to "Our Kind Of Love" for THE BEAUTIFUL GAME. But since it has never been a part of any of his stage shows it is not really 'recycled'.

Updated On: 10/24/05 at 10:56 AM

I think it's a song for Christine too

Good luck finding the novel. I think it's been out of print for years....

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I love that version. Is it the live one from the video on Now and Forever? Because I'd love a recording of that...

And I think Lloyd Webber did several demos of some other songs for Phantom 2 as well: but noidea wherethey are

I heard him say once, in an interview, that he was gonna do Phantom 2 as a movie: but god knows if that will ever happen:

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