When Musicals Spawned Chart Hits

One of the best is 'Take that look off your face' Marti Webb's no. 3 hit from 1980.

I have great memories of singing along to that on the radio, belting out the final line.

The worst is Madonna's version of Don't Cry For Me Argentina. If I never hear that song again I'll be happy.

Loving this song with a belt and a bit of oomph. 

Personally I quite like the single version of Love Changes Everything. And indeed Sarah Brighman's Anything But Lonely.
Dislike Bab's singles from Sunset. They should have let LuPone do them. 

Tina Arena -Whistle Down The Wind!

I LOVE that!

The first thing that sprung to my mind was the line in the Buffy Musical "Would you say it was a breakaway pop hit, or more of a book number?"


Because that's my level of nerd.

Don't forget I Know Him So Well

Duncan James did 'I Believe my Heart' from 'The Woman in White'.

I remember Jason Donovan on the top 40 with 'Ant Dream will Do'

'Night Fever' Adam Garcia from 'Saturday Night Fever.

'Hard Knock Life' Jay Z (sampling original Broadway cast).

So, I'm about 7 years old in Sydney and this song Don't Cry For me Argentina comes on the radio and everyones singing it.

However my father has a cousin with the unfortunate name (in this circumstances) call Chincina and we used to walk around, arms up singing Don't Cry For Me Aunty Chincina and response was to roll her eyes, high and scream "Shut up! I wish they never wrote that song!"

Lol!

I LOVED Dina Carrol! I had her album and knew every word. What DID happen to her?

I wonder if she gets a nice royalty cheque every January, seeing as it's only ever played in December

She was gonna be on that David Guest 'IM NOT DEAD' soul tour but then he died.

I remember she said she had been offered Speed 2 on some music progrmme and Andi Peters was all like 'say ur gonna do it please' and she was like ok. But she didn't. And Andi is quite high up now so I imagine he got her killed

I think the difference is that nowadays musicals have far more specific lyrics. If we think about the Great American Songbook, a good number of those songs came from musicals, but the lyrics weren't specific to the characters or their situations so they were able to transcend the genre. A good example is I Could Write a Book from Pal Joey. It's now a well-known love song but in the context of the show, he's making it all up as a way to get her into bed.

The Hamilton cast recording is a huge chart hit in America. It's STILL in the top 20, nearly two years after it was first released. It was the 5th best selling album of 2016, despite being released in September 2015. In fact, they've just announced tonight that it's gone triple platinum, meaning it's sold over 3 million copies and is the 5th best selling cast album of all time, only below My Fair Lady, Les Mis and two variations of Phantom. But Hamilton hasn't been able to spawn a single song as a chart hit, despite having very current sounding music and even having popular artists cover the songs on The Hamilton Mixtape, which went to #1 in America (although I have heard Chance the Rapper's Dear Theodosia on Radio 1 before). The reason is it's awkward to hear Usher sing about Theodosia writing him a letter every day or Ja Rule rapping about Angelica trying to take a bite out of him. It's nonsensical to the average listener.

So I think it's far more to do with the way that musicals have changed than to do with the songs themselves or even how receptive the general public may be to them.

I Don't Know How To Love Him was recorded by lots of artists but I can clearly remember listening to a Petula Clark version which was released as a single. Cilla also recorded it and released it I think. The original version was recorded by Yvonne Elliman although Helen Reddy's version was more successful I believe.

Murray Head recorded Superstar ahead of the LP so it could be released as a single. (John 19:41 was the B side!)

Steve Harley and Sarah Brightman did Phantom of the Opera (a more rock based version that we are now used to) with a promo video by Ken Russell.

Sarah Brightman and Cliff Richard had All I Ask Of You in the charts for a while.

I can clearly remember listening to Julie Covington's Argentina over and over again on the radio before the show was created.

After Evita opened David Essex released a more uptempo version of Oh What A Circus!

Tom Jones released A Boy From Nowhere, I think, from Matador.

One from my childhood- I Will Wait For You, from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, sung by Andy Williams. I used to think this song was for old people. I began to fall in love with it when I was about 20. It's still one of my favourite songs ever.

The "I think" referred to the releasing of the single, not to the musical in question! (I'm pretty sure it used to be played on the radio.)