If you heard them, you would recognise them. Type them into that video sharing site we're not allowed to mention and you will see what I mean.

I think that's grossly unfair. I'm not a massive fan of Lloyd Webber, but there's no doubting his talent as a songwriter. Sure, he might not produce five songs in every show that become popular in their own right, but most of what he writes works well in context. And there have been more than a few notable exceptions, as previously mentioned, where his songs have transcended the show. To credit Rice alone for 'injecting quality' into their combined work is not only unfair, it's plain wrong. It's usually the case with any successful song writing partnership, that neither partner is as good at what they do without the other.

Being of a certain age I am familiar with the American stuff, and it's just great. I still find myself belting out one of those numbers from time to time. Works of art they are, in a very theatrical way.

ALW has however produced some great stuff. If it's an argument about quantity of quality tunes in shows well I suppose he comes off second best. But that doesn't mean he's not a force in musical theatre.

His songs will stand the test of time just like the American ones.

If Mintball were to have an offspring, I could just imagine them singing the praises of ALW on the forums of tomorrow and saying 'they don't write them like that anymore'.
Block ... chip etc.

Everyone knows that Lloyd Webber just plagiarises music anyway.

Who would have thought that the ESC could have developed into such discussions?

Indeed it is. It's also popular music that reached the overwhelming majority of people who have heard it through cinema before mass adoption of television, reached a wider audience as the first international smash hit films that appeared on mass adopted television and was inherently American when America still had a touch of shining city on a hill about it.

Let's not pretend that their sheen, or that of anything to do with Webber, is purely about the music.

That was a point I was going to make earlier regarding Mintball's dismissal of ALW's music as only being good because Tim Rice wrote the words.

To put together a great theatre production you need the music, the words and the visuals. The misconception is that, in an ALW production, he does everything, when in reality he concieves the idea and writes the music. People like Trevor Nunn are often brought in to stage it, Lawrence Connor to direct it, various people, such as Rice, Hart, Stilgoe write lyrics, Cameron Mackintosh adds the magic and so on. The same names often crop up on virtually all of the big productions.

I didn't say he'd never penned a memorable song – although the ones mentioned have almost all come from the era where Rice was his collaborator, except for two from Phantom[, which had releases as singles.

I actually found Joseph quite jolly fun – but it has one instantly recognisable show stopper and the rest, to be frank, are pretty much forgettable (and I do have the album).

There are plenty of other shows where there have been a paucity of memorable numbers – but the likes of Stephen Schwarz, Richard Adler, Jule Styne and even Jerry Hermann are not generally hailed on the same level of the likes of the great partnerships and composers I mentioned earlier (that selection crosses a number of generations, by the way).



[My emphasis]



Ah, but I haven't asserted that he isn't. I simply find the amount of plaudits that he's given to be irritating in the extreme and out of proportion with his actual ability as a composer – which, in effect, you've pretty much agreed with me on.

His songs will stand the test of time just like the American ones...[/quote]

Well, we'll see.



That's an interesting analysis. One could say, however, that some of the themes of the big shows, even when they were written by US writers, were hardly 'all American'. Cabaret is a prime example. Of R&H's work, neither The Sound of Music )the zenith in terms of their work's popularity) nor The King and I were obviously American stories – and indeed, the music borrowed from forms that were redolent of the countries in which those shows are set. That point can also be made of Cabaret.

Learner & Leowe's biggest success was, let's face it, Shaw with songs – and again, they tried to inject a certain 'Englishness' (or their idea of that) into the music.

I would add that musical theatre – and it is more the case with many of the stage shows than the later film adaptations – often allowed for some remarkably tough storylines/themes to be seen in the mainstream: race and racism; porn/sexual abuse; ageism, war ... And that's not even getting close to the era that produced Cabaret.

And how much, then do such big production values provide cover for the quality (or otherwise) of the actual show, in the same way that much (not all) of the gloss of CGI etc in cinema covers for the absence of good actual vehicles?

Nice swerve. But no cigar. What you actually posited was that
"Andrew Lloyd Webber is not credible if you actually like musical theatre and consider it a credible art form."

If all he could actually manage was one great tune per show, he'd still be writing great tunes, and so your claim that he has no credibility for anyone who likes musical theatre is seemingly based on nothing at all.



I have just taken a straw poll of three teen/early twenties who work here with some of the most outstanding tunes of R&H, Gershwin etc and sadly they've never heard of either most of the tunes or the composers. Maybe you meant they have entered the consciousness of old or ageing people? Oh and I doubt that sad state of affairs is limited to veterans like R&H, today's youth largely have no clue about any great music of the past, even references to the likes of Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, John Lee Hooker, Leadbelly or Aretha Franklin are like as not to be met with "Who?" and those who've heard the name could never name a tune.

But I digress. ALW is no Gershwin, but your put-down that he is not credible for anyone who likes musical theatre is just plain wrong.

Engelbert Humperdinck apparently not dead after all Newsthump

Engelbert Humperdinck apparently not dead after all Newsthump

I've seen Tim Rice make up songs on the spot - he's very good. Isn't Lloyd Webber more of a composer of music than a lyricist?