Released: 1987
Tracks: Overture; Think of Me; Angel of Music; The Mirror (Angel of Music); The Phantom of the Opera; The Music of the Night; Prima Donna; All I Ask of You/Reprise; Entr’acte; Masquerade; Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again; The Point of No Return; Down Once More…/Track Down This Murderer
Best track: Overture, barely
Tracks to skip: if you even bother pushing ‘play’, stop it after Overture!
This is first of my wife’s CDs that I’ve decided to tackle. I just kind picked this at random. I don’t like (at all) Broadway shows, or the singing or any of it. It’s very annoying and overly-cheesy to me. This is the Original Cast Recording of this, so it has Michael Crawford in the lead role with Sarah Brightman supporting. I currently work in the music department of Barnes & Noble, so I am force-fed Brightman all the damn time (along with Andrea Bocelli, Charlotte Church, and numerous others). Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the part of Christine especially for his (then) wife, Brightman. Already into the 4th track, and I know this is going to be torture. The singing is just SO CHEESY! Ugh. And Brightman’s voice is annoying. Gag me with a pitchfork. However, I’m going to “try” to review this with an open mind. It’s gonna be hard, but I’ll try.
Even if you haven’t see this (like me), you’ll be familiar with the songs Overture, Phantom of the Opera and Music of the Night. That doesn’t mean it’s actually good. I’m sorry, but this is the cheesiest stuff I’ve ever heard. Jeez, N*Sync has more soul in their singing than these people! Hearing this I just want to choke these two (Crawford and Brightman). Pure cheese. The background music is a bad product of the 80’s with frequent bad synth sounds and horrible drum-machine tracks. When you put the annoying singing and the 80’s sounds together, along with the faux emotional music, you get some pretty bad stuff. Seriously, the music is really trying to be ‘emotional’, but it actually comes across as SO forced and fake. Like, “oooh, here’s an instrumental passage with strings! You’re supposed to be feeling impressed with the beauty of it!” This is too much; it’s comical how cheesy this is. I can’t believe this is a real Broadway play! This totally sounds like a joke on Broadway.
This is really everything I despise in music. Everything is so forced and so unbelievably cheesy. Yeah, I’m using that word a lot; I don’t care. I can’t think of any synonyms that themselves wouldn’t resemble this music. Anyway, I am very aware that millions of people around the world like this kind of stuff, but I think it’s horrible. And I bet you a lot of the same people that love this stuff think prog rock is pompous and overblown and self-indulgent and cheesy. I really hate how the music is trying so hard to make the listener feel a certain emotion at a certain moment. Lloyd Webber just beats you over the head with this stuff. Thank goodness I don’t have to listen to this three times, I’d go get a razor for my wrists if I had to listen to this even twice.
Can I say that there are absolutely NO redeeming qualities of any of this music, or lyrics, or story or singing? It’s true. I’ll give this the lowest possible rating I can give, but not a zero since at least the musicians know how to play their instruments. Don’t get sucked into this idea that Phantom is a good thing. It’s not. Stay away.
Rating: 5
(yes, that’s *5* out of 100…imagine if you got a 5 on a final exam in high school; that’s how bad this is)
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