February 5, 2013

The Songs From SMASH's Fake Musical Become Popular

There's a fun piece on the TIMES City Room blog today about the growing popularity of songs from a Broadway musical that was never on Broadway. "Bombshell" is the name of the fictional show withint the NBC show SMASH, which follows the behind-the-scenes story of this fake musical's journey to the Great White Way.  While there has been much speculation about whether "Bombshell" might actually be a musical some day, that hasn't stopped patrons of piano bars from singing it's praises alongside standards from SOUND OF MUSIC or LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Marie's Crisis, one of my favorite village nightspots, gets a heavy mention in the piece as a joint where this trend is taking off.

There was a great detail in the story about the writers of SMASH's songs, Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. They been a couple since they met in the 1970s...at Marie's Crisis! (Talk about meeting cute for two songwriters.) Now their tunes from SMASH are well, a smash. At least with the gay piano bar crowd.  The songs have also not done too badly online either. In fact, later this month, there will be a real fake cast album released on iTunes for "Bombshell" with 22 tracks from the non-existent show. And the show itself starts its 2nd season tonight on NBC.