What would it take to make a great jukebox musical?

I just... I think it's gone to far to work in any which way.

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Like bjivie2 said, they'd have to make the songs work around the plot, not work the plot around the songs. The only way I could see that working is if a musician has an extensive catalogue of songs about many different topics, and the creators would look at ALL their songs, not just the popular ones that everyone knows all the words too.

I think it would be easier to write make a musical out of many different musicians songs too. My friends and I had to write one back in high school for English class and we some how made the TRL videos that week work around the plotline of The Odyessy, that somehow included Jordan Knight's "Give It To You". Probably not Broadway-worthy material, but some people don't consider jukebox musicals to be Broadway-worthy anyway.

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It's about choosing songs that help tell a story--and when you have an artist's greatest hits to be obligated to do, you will get stuck with songs that fit in nowhere. This is why I agree with bjivie's point that some artists might serve better than others. OR, you do an artists show, but ONLY choose songs that are right--and oh well if you can't include this hit or that. Artists with a big catalog would do well--Madonna or Prince would interest me (Alek Keshisian made a student movie musical film of WUTHERING HEIGHTS with Madonna songs). But, I would also rather see Prince or Madonna create an original musical.

It's also about having a good book (and I don't mean just the dialogue, I mean the entire structure of the story). If you can't do that--just do a revue like SMOKEY JOE'S or AIN'T MISBEHAVIN'.

I think using various artist's music work also work better--look at MOULIN ROUGE, which did just that. But, that can get very expensive and tricky. And we certainly have had some flops that fall into this category in recent years.

And, then there is the simple notion that people should be striving to create new works and not the next jukebox musical. If the musical isn't coming from true intentions, I imagine it will most likely be crap.

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The Boy from Oz originated, I understand, from a biography of Australian musical icon, Peter Allen. When they decided to musicalize it, it was a happy coincidence that many of the songs Peter Allen had written had autobiographical references and fitted right into this musical biography. Some fitted so well, they could have been written originally for the musical. Strangely, one of the songs omitted from the show ( but restored in the OCR) was a beautiful autobiographical song called Tenterfield Saddler. It didn't fit into the show but it was so relevant to the story.

My understanding of jukebox musicals is that one starts with a pop catalog of past musical hits and a story or plot is woven around it - voila, you have a musical! Sometimes it works fine but sometimes it doesn't.

In the case of The Boy from Oz, it started with the story and career highlights of the life of Peter Allen - and the songs were obviously chosen to mark those biographical highlights, which appealed to its show fans. What made the show even more appealing is that Hugh Jackman, another Boy from Oz, surprised everyone with his extraordinary charisma and rare triple-threat talent as he narrated and acted out the life of his compatriot! From the first song ( All The Lives of Me)...to the last two (Once Before I Go and I Go to Rio), they were quintessentially Peter!

well, you have a great big jukebox center stage. but this is no ordinary jukebox. no. this one is sparked to life by an unexpected electrical storm one night and begins taking on a life of its own, singing and dancing to its own original music! itll be wild.

One artist that could probably have a very nice jukebox musical would be Meatloaf. That's probably because almost every Jim Steinman song ever written was done so in some sort of theatrical context.

I've heard Meat (Mr. Loaf) talk about a musical that Steinman always wanted to do called "Neverland" A lot of his stuff is written with a thought as to how it might work in that.

The Bat Out Of Hell album is brilliant, and with music and theatricality like that, Steinman would write a fantastic dark rock show, in my opinion. I'd love to see and hear it.

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