Warning: If you usually listen to this podcast at a faster speed, singing will be used and this might be a good time to slow your podcast player down.

If you’ve been with me from the very beginning, you know every so often I like to thrown in a little singing now and then. I try to deny being a theater person, but I secretly am. The theater bug bites me every so often and I want to be in a show again. And not just any show. I was brought up listening to Rodgers & Hammerstein, singing along with Julie Andrews and Bernadette Peters, and had it not been for my lack of grace when it comes to dancing, I probably would have pursued it more. But, now that I have a podcast, and I wanted to celebrate the 100 episodes by doing something special, and no one has to see my bad coordination.

I’m your host, Emily Prokop, and this is The Story Behind: The Musical!

Originally, I had a song for this episode’s promo, but I decided to record this straight instead. I just wanted to thank everyone who has supported the show. I’m really proud of not only making it to 100 episodes, but also the one year anniversary of The Story Behind. And many of you have been there from the beginning. Thank you for joining the The Story Behind Facebook Group, Liking the Story Behind Facebook page, following @storybehindpod on Twitter and Instagram, becoming executive producers by supporting the show on Patreon.com, sending notes, emails, DMs of encouragement, retweeting, commenting, telling your friends … really, you guys are the lifeblood of this podcast to keep it going. There’s going to be some exciting things planned for this podcast and myself and I can’t wait to share it with you all. So here’s to another 100 and another year of The Story Behind.

Oh, and if you’re an executive producer of The Story Behind, you can hear the original song I recorded for the promo by going to Patreon.com/TheStoryBehind.

LYRICS

This is the story all about the modern major musical The history’s quite large and certain facts might be disputable It started back in Greece where many theaters were acoustical The middle ages brought them back with church and tra-ve-ling minstrels The 17- and 18-hundreds’ shows were quite satirical Though op-er-a quite serious the musicals were comical The views expressed may not have always suited those imperial But entertainment wins and they continued to be fash’niable.

With names like Strauss and Offenbach they spread fast geographical They hit the U.S.A. and folks enjoyed a bit of Vaud-eh-ville The history’s quite large and certain facts might be disputable This is the story all about the modern major musical

Burlesque, we will not cover because this podcast is for all ears But just to note this was a part of musicals for several years Extravaganzas, Pantomimes and farces were all met with cheers The theater thrived and fattened wallets of investing financiers Broadway emerged as the grand force to rule all things theatrical And stage revues like Zeigfeild’s Follies drew crowds international In 1919 unions forced their contracts with a picket line The ‘20s saw Cole Porter, Hart and Rodgers and then Hammerstein

The Great Depression didn’t keep the musicals from going down But actors moved out west to Hollywood for movies now with sound The history’s quite large and certain facts might be disputable This is the story all about the modern major musical

The people went to movies to escape thoughts of the second war The musicals were loved and records flew off shelves at music stores The decades passed and rock and roll soon stepped on music theater’s toes But Sondheim came and introduced the people to his concept shows The trend revived and musicals came back strong like they were before The audiences clamored for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s epic scores And now our favorite movies-turned-to-musicals all do quite well And history has sold out crowds with R&B by Lin-Manuel.

For episode 100 I came up with doing musicals I hope you learned a bit and all my rhymes weren’t inexcusable The history’s quite large and certain facts might be disputable This is the story all about the modern major musical!