Why did the rise of Jukebox Musicals happen in the 90's?

If you go back a tiny bit further to the late 70's, early 80's, you had a rush of shows like Bubbling Brown Sugar, Ain't Misbehavin', Sophisticated Ladies, One Mo' Time and the previously mentioned Blues In The Night. These though tended to be based on a style or a genre and sometimes a composer. They were all pretty successful and I would guess some bright spark thought that using modern 'pop' music was a money spinner and could bring a whole new audience in, one who maybe wasn't currently spending cash at the theatre!

There is a strong case for saying that the Jukebox concept predates any of the titles mentioned so far.

1728 saw the first performances of The Beggar's Opera - which took folk tunes and popular songs/arias and wove them into the narrative of Macheath and his misdeeds.

Some might say that a ballad opera is not a musical - but given the theatrical styles of the day, it very much was the first jukebox piece that I can find.

Beatlemania was also at the Astoria late 70s, as was Elvis before that...

Just remembered Are You Lonesome Tonight? at the Phoenix, mid 80s, featuring Elvis songs. I suppose what we've worked out is that jukebox shows seem like a modern phenomenon but they've actually been around for a while, sometimes going over and over the same material. To me it's the audiences attending these sorts of shows that have changed...

Yakkety Yak at The Astoria in early 1983 with Darts and the McGann brothers. I've still got the programme somewhere. That was a lot of fun.

I get really annoyed at the snobbery of people who don't like shows such as WWRY. Fair enough if you don't like it, that's your prerogative, but to say things like it's a "damning indictment of how far society has fallen" is a bit offensive to those who happen to have a different opinion to you about something as utterly harmless as a cheesy musical. Likes and dislikes are always subjective and nothing gives you the right to be judgemental about other people just because you prefer theatre you consider to be more refined or intellectually challenging. People like theatre for different reasons and some people would do well to remember and respect that.


Rant over. I loved Mamma Mia, WWRY and Sunny Afternoon - all a fun evening's entertainment as far as I'm concerned and nothing more, but sometimes that's all that is necessary.

If you are old Mz Fitz what does that make me? I remember JPGR&B very well.



I thought of it as a very funny  play with music sung and played by a band who were not in the narrative. Still my memory may be faulty as Wiki points out this was August 1974 and calls it a musical.



Just look at some of the emerging talent it featured.

Writer Willy Russell.

• John Lennon : Bernard Hill

• Paul McCartney : Trevor Eve

• Ringo Starr : Anthony Sher

• Singer and pianist : Barbara Dickson

Another Forbidden Planet fan here... last seen on tour in Oxford, I want to say a couple of years ago, but given that 'time flies ever faster' thing I havre going on, it was probably 4 or 5!

If you go way back to the earlier parts of the twentieth century, quite a lot of musicals were created by stringing together a bunch of already popular songs with a story. It's more obvious when they do it nowadays as popular music and musical theatre have diverged from each other in style quite significantly, but it's really not a new thing.

There is no problem, it's just that this works in both directions. Just like people are allowed to enjoy WWRY despite my own opinion that it's terrible, I am entitled to hold that view and do not deserve to be accused of being a "snob" who is "judgmental about other people" when I said absolutely nothing of the sort.

I slightly paraphrased the offensive part of your post, but in full: "WWRY is unmitigated garbage on every level and is a sad indictment of how far we've fallen as a society."

You may not have meant the implication that people who like WWRY are somehow examples of how terrible you seem to think society is, or at least their taste in theatre is, but it's there.  You're entitled to dislike the show of course, but there was absolutely no need to make it a wider comment about people in general and I hope you can see how it can be read in a certain way that doesn't reflect well.  It's how I read the words you wrote - I'm just telling you what I took from your words, I can't get inside your head to know what you meant so I can only go by what I see on the thread.

I was also making a more general comment about some people's attitude to jukebox musicals in general, not specifically directed at you, so it's interesting that you jumped straight on the defensive, which to me suggests you (at least now if not before) realise your words might be read in a way that might cause a degree of offence.  It doesn't matter, it's just phraseology and the extent to which care is taken over word choice, I'm simply explaining why I personally (and it's just my opinion after all) had a problem with the phrasing used.  The comment about people in general in relation to jukebox musical snobbery stands though.

Revues, arising in the early part of the last century usually had original scores so were very different. In fact they often had a house composer, Irving Berlin for the Music Box revues, Gershwin for the George White's Scandals etc. The songs often became hits only because they were written for these shows.

It's really only in the seventies when the revue started to become more of a compilation of existing songs.