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Alrighty, folks. So a few weeks ago, I did a video on my favorite Broadway musicals of all time. But I was inundated with requests for my least favorite or at least most overrated Broadway musicals. So get ready, I'm gonna tick some of you off. This video is sponsored by our friends over at Helix. Sleep. Alrighty, folks, so some on my list will make you happy, some will make you quite sad. I think some of you know where I'm going with this. Now, here are my standards for most overrated. People have to think they're great, and they're actually not that good. This doesn't mean that they absolutely suck, although some of them really, really do. It means that people think they're a 10 and they're actually like a 4. If people don't think they're great, then they don't make the list. So let's go with what was at the time the longest running musical in the history of Broadway.
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Cat by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Now, I'm not an Andrew Lloyd Webber hater by any stretch of the imagination. I think Phantom of the Opera is overrated, but it also happens to be a very effective piece of art. I don't love it. Some people link to 10, but it's like a 7. Phantom of the Opera, it's got some really great numbers. The stagecraft is great. Somehow Lloyd Webber is capable of making the Phantom, who's really unsympathetic character, quite sympathetic. However, Cats is a disaster area. Cats is just a musical that was written for gay men and little old ladies who go to Broadway and have Cats. You want to know where J.D. vance's single cat ladies came from? They are all the constituents of the actual musical Cats, which, by the way, was then turned into one of the worst movies of literally all time with Taylor Swift and James Corden, among others, had like a huge wide variety of stars in the movie.
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It still was box office poison, like box office arsenic. The London production of cats ran for 21 years. 21 years, which is crazy. And almost 9,000 performances. The Broadway production ran for 18 years and almost 7,500 performance performances, which is nuts. That's just crazy when you consider that way better shows have run for like maybe 100 performances. 9,000 performances in London. What the hell? Anyway, I will just let you know that the most memorable thing about Cats is actually the Team America bit on Cats, which is hysterically funny, in which we learn that one of the characters has lifelong problems because he was molested by Jellicle Cat at a performance of Cats.
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I was raped by Mr. Mistoffeles.
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It won best musical, best featured actress in Betty Buckley, who, of course, was incredibly talented. Betty Buckley. She actually performed in one of my favorite musicals, the original 1776. She was Martha Jefferson. It is most famous for the song Memory, one of the most overrated and overplayed songs ever. One of President Trump's favorite songs. He apparently likes to play it at his rallies. Oh, boy. Here is some of the. I hate cats so much, I can't even tell you. I can't even tell you.
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Mary all alone in the mo.
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There's a person dressed up as a cat just by the way.
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Oh, no, I was beautiful then. I remember the time I knew what happiness was.
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Why are you supposed to feel for a cat? I'm just confused.
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Live again.
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Okay. Yep. Wildly overrated. And of course, the movie is a horror show. An absolute horror show. Next terrible musical. Wildly overrated. Rent again. The best thing about Rent is the parody that is done of Rent in Team America. Team America. If you haven't seen it, it is very, very R rated.
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Everyone has A's. My grandma and my dog O.
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Also hysterically funny. They do a parody of Rent in Team America called Lease, with a song called Everybody has AIDS Barricades.
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Everyone has aids, aids.
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And pretty much that's the story of the show. It is Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer Prize winning rock musical. Again, the Death of Broadway Man. This thing won the Pulitzer. Ugh. It's terrible. The music is not good. Seasons of Love Again. One of the most overrated songs of all time. It's just bad. But it's iconically bad. Again, this thing played forever because people wanted to say that they had seen it because they were so tolerant of the lgbtq. Divided by Sign Movement, a musical about the marginalized. A lot of big stars got their start in Rent, including Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel. This won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and best musical, original score and featured actor at the 1996 Tonys. A terrible. A truly terrible piece of trash. Rent. Here are seasons of love.
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525,600 minutes. 525,000 moments. Oh, dear. 525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year in daylight, in sunsets, in. In midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife, in 525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in the light?
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Um, well, I mean, you did it repeatedly in that song. In minutes.
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525,600 minutes.
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Terrible lyrics, bad music. And it led to the popification, like the full popification of Broadway. Rent. This musical led to the sort of complete revitalization of Broadway, but along pop lines. So instead of the almost operatic lines that Lloyd Webber pursued in Phantom, whether it was pursued in Les Mis or the old sort of Broadway standards of Rodgers and Hammerstein, instead you got this pop crap. It was juvenile, tuneless, mediocre, and horrible. So, yeah, Rent, one of my least favorite musicals. Well, we'll get to more of whatever the hell this is in just one second. First, let me tell you something. I never realized just how bad my old mattress was until I got my Helix sleep mattress. You know that feeling you get when you wake up and your back is already complaining? That was me more often than not. Don't even get me started on how my old mattress turned into a heat trap at night.
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Helixleep.combenton now speaking of pop crap, Dear Evan Hansen Wildly overrated. You'll notice, by the way, that all of these were dramatic failures when it came to making a film of them. Rent. They made a film of it and just nothing. Dear Evan Hansen. They tried to make a film of it. The problem was that the star of Dear Evan Hansen is a guy named Ben Platt. Ben Platt is supposed to play a teenage boy. By the time he made the movie, he was 72 years old, so that was kind of a problem for them. I did see this one on Broadway. The lyrics and music are by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. I believe that Pasek and Paul are also responsible for which Disney movie Did they do Pasek and Paul, Greatest Showman, Greatest Showman and La La Land, both of which again, they wrote lyrics for Speechless.
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In Aladdin, which again, is one of the dumbest songs in the history of revised musical theater, it's incredibly stupid. The entire plot line is Jasmine ends up silenced and has to be saved by Aladdin, by the way. So in any case, dear Evan Hansen, it has one of the worst plots of any Broadway musical. So basically, it's about a kid who is not well accepted and has some sort of near autistic condition. He ends up confronted at the beginning of the musical with an angry suicidal teenager who signs his cast for some reason. And then the teenager commits suicide, and then he lies because he wants to get in good with the sister of this kid. So he is a liar and a grifter and a con man who ends up taking sexual advantage of the sister of the person who committed suicide. And somehow he's the hero of the play.
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It's really quite terrible. Many of the people who are in this original Broadway musical have gone on to sort of other things. For example, Mike Face, who played Connor Murphy in the musical, ended up being in the musical version of west side Story, the Spielberg version. Ben Platt, of course, has been in a bunch of stuff. Thank you. Performing live gives me such a rush. But this one, best musical and no. Just no. So again, this is one of the better numbers, right? Forever is the best number in the musical, but there's really not much else that's memorable in it.
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All we see sky for forever we let the world pass by Forever Feels like we could go other born forever this way, this way all we see.
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Is light for forever I mean, it's a fine song. It's a nice song. Also, the rest of the musical is totally unmemorable and has one of the worst plots ever. So wildly overrated. Total box office failure when they brought it out as a movie. All right, now, the ones that are gonna piss everybody off. You knew they were coming. You knew they were coming. Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda. Now I know some people have just an addiction to Lin Manuel Miranda. Here's the thing about Lin Manuel Miranda. He cannot write a melody. 1770, also his supposed lyrical genius is very simple to do. I'm just telling you, having looked at lyrics all my life and written some lyrics myself, the easiest lyrics to write are ones that are polysyllabic. If you have long lines of pattern, very, very easy to fill those long lines of pattern.
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And that sort of Lin Manuel Miranda specialty is this very fast paced patter in his lyrics, that's all of Hamilton.
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If we're aggressive and competitive, the union gets a boost. You'd rather give it a sedative. So this is what it feels like to match with someone at your level. What the hell is the catches?
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So again, I'm not gonna say that Hamilton is trash. I don't think it's trash. I've criticized it before. I don't like the basic idea that you can only sympathize with the Founding Fathers. If they, quote, unquote, look like you, I think is really ridiculous.
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Immigrants, we get the job done.
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At the same time, I sort of understand the baseline patriotism, which is the idea that the Founding Fathers should in fact represent everybody in America. I agree with that. I just don't think that you need to have somebody that looks like you in order to believe that they represent your thoughts. I think it's a bad idea. In any case, Hamilton is this huge hit about Alexander Hamilton, of course. The Founding Father, the father of the Treasury Department, among other things. Why are you white? So much of this musical is reliant again on that sort of Lin Manuel Miranda patter, patter, patter Patterson.
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We got hidden talents. You don't see hidden secrets. If we can show you those.
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I find this stuff deeply annoying. As you know, I'm not a big fan of rap, despite being one of the great rap artists of our own time. And so Lin Manuel Miranda, if you can say that Gershwin sort of brought jazz to the classical music hall, then you can say Lin Manuel Miranda brought rap to Broadway. And not a fan, not a fan. Here is some of a Hamilton.
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This kid is insane, man. Took a book collection just to send him to the mainland. Get your education, don't forget from whence you came. And the world's gonna know your name. What's your name? Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. There's a million things I haven't done Just you wait. Just you wait.
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Sing it, Hum it to me. Hum it to me. Does that sound like Some enchanted evening to you? Really like the lack of melody in Lin Manuel Miranda's work really bothers me in a major way. Broadway is about hummable melodies. In the end, there's not much hummable in Lin Manuel Miranda. Not a huge fan of Hamilton. Again, not the worst thing I've ever seen. But the sort of reverence with which it is treated is simply beyond me. Okay. And now here is the heresy of all heresies. You ready for it? You knew it was coming overrated Les Mis. Now, again, I actually don't hate Les Mis. Okay, Les Mis is not like a 3. Les mis to me is like a 6.
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What is wrong with you?
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And the reason Les Mis is a six is because it runs for eight years. Now, I understand that the novel of Les Mis by Victor Hugo is a thousand pages. Also. There is so much extraneous in this score. So much in this score that just doesn't need to be there. Now, again, there are some numbers in Les Mis that I really, really like. Okay. There are particularly two numbers in Les Mis that I really like. One Day More is a very, very good number than ends Act 1. And as people can find me singing, it stars from Les Mis, which is the Javert number where he explains his motivation, is a good number. And it's buried in mountains. Mountains of pablum. It is so long. The only character who you kind of care about is Jean Valjean. Anybody who tries to suggest that any of the other characters are deeply sympathetic, that's just not right.
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Some of some of the other big numbers that people tend to love, for example, I Dreamed a Dream. I Dreamed A Dream has no bridge. I Dreamed a Dream is just the chorus over and over and over and over, right? And then you move up. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Right. It's very repetitive. There are many sort of musical mistakes that are in Les Mis, including people picking up on other people's themes that they've never heard before and singing them as their own, which is kind of a musical theater. No, no, not in my heart. If a character who doesn't know another character starts to sing the theme of the first character, there has to be some common thread in order for that to happen that doesn't actually happen in Les Mis.
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People will just pick up other people's themes and sing them randomly. The lyrics are kind of a big nothing burger. Except for stars. Again, I'm not saying that Les Mis is bad. I'm just saying it's wildly overrated. Plus, it's kind of a disaster area that the original Les Mis was done with synthesizer. That is a score that cries out for some decent orchestration. Don't hate. I'm gonna say it over and over. I don't hate it. Don't hate it. Just don't love it in the way that so many other people seem to love Les Mis. Like, Master of the House is terrible. St. Bring him home. It's too high. God, it's High Forbidden. Broadway does a very good rendition of this. Master of the House is just a disaster. I hate Master of the House. Ugh. Here we go.
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Everybody's room companion? Every day is gone? Dirty bunch of games and days is what a sorry little love.
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Meh Mie, you're breaking my heart again. There's stuff in here that I really like. I will once again call out stars, which is a terrific number. One Day More is a terrific number, but empty chairs, empty tables.
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My friends, my friends, my friends, my friends.
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So that is my list of most overrated musicals. I know, I know. I'm going to ripped in the comments for a lot of that, but, you know, tough. It's my list. You can have your own. Drop yours in the comments below.