And because each of our own realities is finite and definitive, I will say: T hey are unquestioningly the Greatest 30 Show Tunes of the Past 40 Years.
So here are the 30 songs from a few more years than I’ve been around that have meant something to me. And cry at them, sometimes, when it’s late and you’ve had a couple drinks). Different songs mean different things to you at different times in your life other songs drive you crazy but you find yourself powerless to deny their greatness (and still know every single word. Because that’s what the musical theater is: a deeply personal, deeply ingrained identification that is often formed early in childhood and never lets go. I’m sure I’ll hear about that, and I know exactly from whom). I don’t apologize for this (although I do apologize for having never seen, or even listened to, The Light in the Piazza. So that seemed like plenty, and what eventually came out is a list that is deeply personal, probably idiosyncratic, and certainly may not please everyone. And also, the past 40 years encapsulate the post-Vietnam era, on Broadway no less than in America itself, and have brought us to our present state of societal and emotional collapse: the cynical Weimar-like decadence of the late ’70s (and also, Annie) the greed, bombast, and conservatism of the ’80s (and the quiet intellectual resistance that sprung up in reaction to it) the AIDS crisis, which devastated New York City, and the Broadway community in particular the wholesome commercialism of the ’90s and the Disneyfication of Times Square (a cultural phenomenon that, while for many regrettable, is nonetheless important enough that I decided to make eligible songs that originated in Disney movies before turning up on the Great White Way) the confusion and vague paranoia of the early aughts, in a city still reeling in the aftermath of 9/11, and the optimistic, tolerant multiculturalism of the Obama years, which now feels as though it was all an impossible dream, the way it must have to listen to the original soundtrack of Camelot during the Nixon administration. Why only the past 40 years? Why not the best show tunes of all time? Well, first of all, because Broadway has been around since the late 19th century, and I’m only one small human being (no matter what Eric Trump might say) and human beings tend to function best within fathomable limits. What is the modern American musical theater? What are its best songs? When does it even most properly begin? Must we now divide everything into “Before Hamilton” and “After Hamilton,” as with the birth of Jesus Christ himself? Phantom of the Opera is still running - would “Before Phantom” and “After Phantom” be more appropriate? Is there even one genuinely good song in Phantom? How much Sondheim can you cram into a listicle before even your most dedicated base gets restless? And were there more than three good new musicals on Broadway in the whole of the 1990s? These questions, along with many others, were the ones I asked myself as I sat down to write this list.