Broadway and the Grammys have had an on-again, off-again relationship for decades.This year, the recording industry’s big night is offering a kiss and then some to “Hamilton,” which will be featured in a segment, live via satellite, from New York on February 15. The cast will perform for the Los Angeles audience from the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical phenomenon has been in residence since last summer. The invitation to perform will be the first time in five years that the telecast has featured music from a Broadway show and only the eighth in its history.Past participants include “Godspell” (1972), “The Magic Show” (1975), “Sophisticated Ladies” (`1982), “La Cage Aux Folles”( 1984), “The Will Rogers Follies” (1992), “Riverdance” and “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk” (1997), and “American Idiot” (2010).“Hamilton” is almost certain to win for Best Musical Theater Album against its competition: “Fun Home,” “The King and I,” “Something Rotten!” and “An American in Paris.” Of course, there can always be an upset, as there was in 1997 when “Riverdance” beat out the heavily favored “Rent.” But all bets are on Miranda to earn his second Grammy, having already picked up the award for “In the Heights,” his Broadway debut in 2009.The cast album, produced by Miranda, Alex Lacamoire, and Bill Sherman, with The Roots’ Questlove and Black Thought, has achieved record ratings since it was released last October 17. There are so many variables in the way record sales are tabulated, but suffice to say that “Hamilton” launched at number 12 on the Billboard 200 — only “Book of Mormon” debuted at a higher number (10) and peaked at number 3. “Hamilton” is also among only six cast albums ever to hit the top 20 in the Billboard charts in the last fifty years. That honor roll includes “If/Then”, “Book of Mormon,” “Rent,” “Dreamgirls,” and “Hair,” which dominated the charts for nineteen weeks in 1969. The good news for Broadway is that it is once again becoming a dominant part of the national cultural discourse, thanks to “Hamilton” and the constant incursion of pop composers — including Sting, Green Day, Elton John, Duncan Sheik, and Sarah Bareilles. In fact, in the same month that “Hamilton” was released, Bareilles’s rendition of “She Used to Be Mine,” claimed the 40th spot on Billboard’s Adult Pop Songs Chart. Written for the upcoming Broadway musical “Waitress,” the song was the first of that genre to achieve such sales and airplay since 1985, when the charts featured “One Night in Bangkok” from the concept album “Chess” by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.In the 1950s, the original cast album of “My Fair Lady” was the number-one selling record in the country for a cumulative total of 15 weeks, and dozens of the top recording artists of the day covered — and had top hits — with such songs as “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Nearly twenty years later, in 1976, Judy Collins’s “Send in the Clowns,” from the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music,” was chosen as the Grammy’s Song of the Year. While those days are long gone, “Hamilton” brings the Broadway musical front and center in an unprecedented way. The only question now is how long it will take before Beyonce or Lady Gaga cover one of the songs from the show.
↧