When Musicals Spawned Chart Hits

We also can't forget Rent and If/Then both being in the Top 10, as well as Dear Evan Hansen!

She also released an slightly more percussive version of On My Own. Had that on 45rpm too!

That was actually a bit of an accidental hit. There was a misunderstanding - ALW thought he was getting Boyzone when he was actually only getting Stephen Gately. The original version Gately recorded was much more traditionally musical theatre.

But Boyzone were doing a charity gig  - IIRC it was for Capital, it was definitely broadcast on the radio - and they ended up doing a group version of it. Not sure how it came about - it might have just been that the performance was meant to promote the musical - Tina Arena was on too I think -  and they'd booked Boyzone, not Stephen Gately, or it might have been down to ALW's misunderstanding. It was meant to be a one-off thing - the song wasn't on their current album at all, and it was pretty obvious what album track was meant to be the next single. But Capital loved it and started playing the version they'd recorded at the gig, calling it 'Boyzone's next single' - which of course no-one else was playing, because no-one else had a copy of it. They were playing it pretty much every hour. The band realised pretty sharpish they had a hit on their hands and decided they should record and release it, and re-issue the album with it on.

Ah, interesting. I had no idea. I do have the CD single though (and the CD single of Hannah Waddingham's "Our kind of love". And the maxi vinyl of Frances Ruffelle's "Stranger to the rain"  ... and other stuff that was meant to chart, like Barbra Streisand's "With One Look" before Sunset Boulevard came out.

I think that today's musical producers have perhaps given up trying to get a "hit song" to chart by creating an extra version with a famous singer/band, even when it would be easy/obvious like Gary Barlow releasing a single with a big song from The Girls...

Coincidently on this morning's Popmaster on Radio 2 there's been a bonus round "hits from the Musicals" and there were a few more to add to the list.
Kenny Ball performing March of the Siamese Children, Harry Secombe singing If I Ruled the World and Shirley Bassey with a lovely rendition of Climb Ev'ry Mountain

Mika and Ariana Grande with Popular Song

These days hits spawn musicals, rather than the opposite.

Blimey! Even I don't remember this thread.

We Don't Talk About Bruno is sort of from a musical. It did very well in the hit parade.

Mika and Ariana Grande’s version of Popular?

But did it spawn a single "big" hit that topped the charts and was known to everyone, not just theatre circles?

I think the chart-topping stuff died off in the 90s. For me this was also the decade when musical theatre disassociated itself from mainstream music with a flood of subpar Les Mis-style weepies, while pop music became more beat driven and indie rock had a revival with the Britpop wave. 

If anything, shows like Hamilton and Six have bridged the widening gap between pop(ular) music and musical theatre again, but not with single outstanding songs, just as a whole that reaches a younger generation beyond the typical theatregoer. 

Even massive stars can't really help when the product doesn't reach the masses, see Taylor Swift and Beautiful Ghosts (which wasn't a great song to begin with). And while some of the movie adaptations of popular musicals have been moderately successful, none were REAL smash hits at the box office. Some of the movie musicals like The Greatest Showman and A Star Is Born did better, but have they really made a lingering impact? I loved the songs from A Star Is Born like "Shallow" and have them in my playlists to this day, but I don't think they came anywhere near the long lasting success of either the big classics from the Golden Age or the big ALW chart toppers.