Did You Know These Musical Theatre Songs Made the Billboard Charts?

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This time, the reader question was: Is it common for musical theatre songs to make it to the Billboard charts?

During and prior to the Golden Age of Broadway, songs regularly premiered on stage and then charted, spending time on the radio and becoming popular worldwide. In the 1960s, Broadway songs and popular music diverged, and work from musicals was no longer synonymous with chart hits. There have certainly been a good share of exceptions since that decade, as Broadway has evolved to mirror popular, current music genres. Several of the songs that have broken through to the Billboard charts can be heard on Broadway today! 

Billboard charts began in the 1930s as a way to keep track of which albums were selling best and which songs were most popular (partially from jukebox play). In the years to come, the company split the charts by genre. These days, Billboard boasts a “Stage and Screen” category that keeps track of the most popular cast albums and film soundtracks. Cast albums were first given separate consideration in 2006. But for the majority of the time that Billboard has been tracking the popularity of music, songs from Broadway were mixed right in with all other kinds of work. 

Hair has a significant place in Broadway history. At the exact time that Broadway was diverging from popular music, this rock musical burst onto the scene and astounded audiences with its counterculture message and its modern music. Hair, with book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado (who also originated the roles of Berger and Claude) and music by Galt MacDermot, opened on Broadway in 1968 after an initial run off-Broadway. Not only did the cast album hit the mainstream music charts but several recordings of songs from Hair as covered by other artists did as well, including “Aquarius/ Let The Sunshine In” recorded by The Fifth Dimension and “Hair” recorded by the Cowsills. At the end of 1969, “Aquarius/ Let the Sunshine” in was declared the #2 song of the year. 

In the same year that Hair came to Broadway, so did Promises, Promises. The musical based on the film The Apartment had book by Neil Simon, music by Burt Bacharach, and lyrics by Hal David. Bacharach and David were already among the hottest pop songwriters of the era so it was no surprise that songs from Promises, Promises also crossed over to the pop charts, including the title song as well as “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again”, which, as recorded by Tom Jones, was the #8 song of the year in 1969. The following year, Dionne Warwick’s recording of the same song would also chart.  

Although pop and rock artists were covering songs from the theatre far less in the late 1960s and 1970s than they had in previous eras, the songs that did achieve exceptions were historic. Because of the rise of off-Broadway as its own arena, 1970 actually brought an off-Broadway musical number to the charts. “(If You Let Me Make Love To You Then) Why Can’t I Touch You?” was part of the hit off-Broadway show Salvation, a rock musical by Peter Link and C.C. Courtney that commented on organized religion. Ronnie Dyson, who got his start in theatre before becoming an R&B recording artist, gave voice to the song. 

Like Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar also had its establishment detractors when it burst onto the Broadway scene. The show telling the story of Jesus Christ through an anachronistic rock score by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice was not even nominated for Best Musical at the Tony Awards. But it did achieve several popularity trophies on the Billboard charts with the title song, as performed by Murray Head, hitting the charts in 1971 after being released as a single. The premiere of the show on Broadway was pre-empted not only by Jesus Christ Superstar’s single release but by an entire concept album that amassed fans for the show before it could be seen live. “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” performed by Helen Reddy also made the Billboard 100.

In the 1970s, comparatively few songs that came from the stage made it to the top 100 hit list at the end of a given year. But yet another came not from Broadway, but from off-Broadway. In 1975, Gladys Knight & The Pips made the Top 100 with their mashup of “The Way We Were” and “Try to Remember”. The latter premiered in off-Broadway’s The Fantasticks, by Tom Schmidt and Harvey Jones in 1960. Fifteen years later, the song was still heard on stage every night as the show was still running; it would go on to become off-Broadway’s—and the world’s—longest running musical, eventually racking up 42 years of performances.

Of course, many songs that originate on stage gain a new level of popularity when the show they appear in is adapted for the silver screen. The movie adaptation of Grease was released in 1978 and expanded the legacy of the hit Broadway show from 1972. But, Grease’s most popular tracks from its film soundtrack were actually of songs that were new for the screen version and didn’t appear in the stage musical. The title song was #11, “You’re The One That I Want” was #13, and “Hopelessly Devoted to You” was #35 that year, but none of those songs appeared in the original Broadway production. Historically, when incidences like this occur, it is often because the newer songs are pushed and promoted so that they can be considered for awards when existing material is ineligible. “Summer Nights” which was in the original show, hit #69. 

Murray Head has the distinction of charting with not one but two songs from Broadway during this time period where the feat was rarely achieved. Head’s “One Night in Bangkok” from Chess was on the hit list in 1985. The song with music by Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus and lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice was none of the writers’ first time making the list. Anderson and Ulvaeus had had countless Billboard Top 100 hits with ABBA and Rice had made it with “Superstar”. 

While a few songs from Broadway made the weekly Billboard list throughout the years, there was a severe drought of musical theatre that made it all the way to the yearly top 100. In 1997, “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”, as sung by Madonna, made it to the end-of-year chart. As sung on the soundtrack for the movie version of Evita, which had opened in 1979, the tune by Lloyd Webber and Rice marked another time that the two achieved popular chart status. 

The system these days is not conducive to individual songs from musicals reaching the charts. For one, musicals haven’t in recent years been releasing and promoting singles for radio play. While Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has broken countless records, including its cast album achieving 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 and hitting #2 on the rap charts, its individual tracks haven’t landed in the top 100 for a given year. At one point in 2016, Hamilton was the #3 album on the Billboard chart, one of only three cast recordings to land in the top 10 albums in 50 years.