Product Description

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Track Listing

1. Good Morning Baltimore
2. The Nicest Kids In Town
3. Mama, I'm A Big Girl Now
4. I Can Hear The Bells
5. (The Legend of) Miss Baltimore Crabs
6. It Takes Two
7. Welcome To The 60's
8. Run And Tell That!
9. Big, Blonde And Beautiful
10. The Big Dollhouse
11. Good Morning Baltimore Reprise
12. (You're) Timeless To Me
13. Without Love
14. I Know Where I've Been
15. (It's) Hairspray
16. Cooties
17. You Can't Stop The Beat

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6828 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2002-08-13
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Cast Recording
• Dimensions: .26 pounds

Amazon.com
The cast recording for the Broadway musical of John Waters's 1988 paean to dance, music, big beautiful women, and integration is a sheer delight. It's wonderfully upbeat all the way through, with a classic feel that's in keeping with the story's setting in the early 1960s. The characters come alive in these songs, from Marissa Jaret Winokur's (Tracy Turnblad) opening lines in "Good Morning Baltimore" to the stunningly upbeat finale, "You Can't Stop the Beat." The music is by Marc Shaiman, whose recent projects include South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, as well as a number of film soundtracks, and his compositions are simultaneously solid and exuberant. Shaiman and Scott Wittman's lyrics brim over with the unreserved passions and primary-color emotions that made the film so successful. Regardless of one's familiarity with the story or the stage production, it's hard to avoid the appeal of this recording; even the less cheerful songs are awash in bright colors, without disrespect for their subjects. --Genevieve Williams

Customer Reviews

Slickly Botched
The disclaimer is that this is a review of the cd, not the score, which is wonderful. The problem with the recording is that it was produced by the composer, Marc Shaiman, who has mostly worked with incidental film music. This score needed a producer familiar with theatrical sound because the score is easily the best thing about seeing the show live. What we get in this recording in a slickly produced (overproduced) pop record that favors the lead vocals while treating the accompanying music and vocals as background (in the truest sense of the word). The urgency and fun of the music is lost here, and this recording lands with a hefty thud when it should have sparkled to life. Oh, and the percussion is really loud, too, perhaps to try to give the recording a Wall of Sound-like quality. It just ends up being distracting and overwhelming. Hopefully, the show will be recorded live, or it will eventually be remastered. For now it's a lame souvenir of a theatrically vibrant score.

So infectious there should be a vaccine...
"Hairspray" is a terrific modern musical. It could be this generation's "Grease", only with a better plot. In fact, if you like "Grease" AND you enjoy "Little Shop of Horrors", this is a guaranteed future favorite for you.
The story, such that it is, involves Tracy Turnblad, a chunky but peppy white female who aches to dance on a local "American Bandstand"-type show in Baltimore circa the early 60's. Not only does she not fit the "typical" teenager on the show, but she finds it astonishing that blacks cannot dance on the show with whites.
Her mother, played by the inimitable Harvey Fierstein, naturally underestimates her daughter's tenacity. She believes that Tracy will never get on the show, and doesn't want to see her crushed by unattainable goals.
As you'd expect, she gets on the show, and dancing integration is achieved, but the music used to get you there is flat-out, full-blown, grin-from-ear-to-ear FUN.
It is brilliantly derivative of pre-British invasion rock music, melding rockabilly with Detroit soul. It sounds like EVERY song you can remember. Seriously. They're all here.
In the same way that a fond memory tends to get better with time, the score distills the best parts of that era's music, and pretty much puts it ALL on the stage. Spector-ish epics, raucous Motown, steamy Stax, teen idol Presley...I could spend days counting off the references. There should be an index.
The voices are above-average Broadway fare...WAY above-average in parts, and suit their characters just dandy.
Perhaps the musical would be better served if the entire score was presented, as people who have not yet seen the show are missing out on some great stuff that happens between these tunes.
Having just seen the show on Broadway, listening to the CD brings back the terrific time I had in the theater, but I think even the most jaded, uninitiated listener will cave into the unbridled enthusiasm of this project, notably the finale, "You Can't Stop The Beat." There's enough energy in that song to power the entire Tri-state area for a week.
I loved this show.

Delightful musical
An effective feel-good show: music has a good beat and the costumes and choreography are second only to the dazzling attires and complex movements of the very charming Flower Drum Song revival.

A must-see on Broadway and a must-buy soundtrack for amazon.com customers!