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Interesting titbit from Radio 2's 'Greatest Song From A Musical' countdown yesterday - 'This Is Me' from Greatest Showman was at #4 which, not my choice but ok, but then the director had this to say about the songwriting process... (Thread)
..."If we heard a song they'd written and I couldn't hum it the next day, they'd have to rewrite it" which to me is very much a bad philosphy?? A song, particularly in musical theatre, should not be solely judged on how catchy it is & values commercialism over artistic integrity
Compare this to Howard Ashman's philosophy of "if you can take a song and remove it from the script and the script still makes sense you haven't done your job properly" - I'd argue you could do this with every single Greatest Showman song (except The Other Side)
And yet... the general public say it's the fourth greatest MT song OF ALL TIME. Better than every Sondheim, every Rodgers + Hammerstein, than every musical that has ever won a Tony, Olivier or an Oscar - so am I wrong?
Is an audience's main concern that they want to see bops? Do they not care about how they integrate into the narrative especially on film? Am I just a snob who can't enjoy Never Enough because she's meant to be a goddamn opera singer
This Is Me has a strong (yes, and hummable) tune, great anthemic orchestration and a powerhouse vocal performance, but you learn nothing new about the characters or their situation past the first ten seconds - there's not even a key change the progression is so slight
In essence, This Is Me is a brilliant pop song - but is it musical theatre? Is such a question gatekeeping what "musical theatre" is and should be? Is it pushing the form forward to fit modern sensibilities or regressing it back to simply being a revue?
I'm not sure this thread has a point or even an ending, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it and I think the pros and cons of this new template of the modern musical film should be discussed. Greatest Showman stans sound off in the comments below
