Notes & Personnel Info |  | Principal cast includes: Adam Garcia. | | There may have been stranger stage musicals than Saturday Night Fever -- perhaps Footloose is one of them -- but it's harder to think of a cast recording that is as curiously flat as the London Cast's 1999 stage adaptation of the 1977 classic. That's because the core of the musical is based on pop songs that everyone knows by heart -- they know the melody, the lyrics and, most importantly, the recording itself. "Staying Alive," "Boogie Shoes," "If I Can't Have You," "Night Fever," "Jive Talkin'," "Tragedy," "You Should Be Dancing," "How Deep Is Your Love," and "Disco Inferno" have all been indelibly stamped into the popular consciousness after decades of airplay, and it's impossible to hear them in any way outside of their original recorded versions. That, and these new versions aren't particularly good, different, or interesting. Similarly, the new songs are simply there -- they're not bad, but they don't have the nostalgic pull or impeccable popcraft of the classic disco songs on the rest of the album. Perhaps this all catches fire on-stage, but on record, it's too flat to spark the imagination. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine |
|
CD
