My Top 100 Favorite Showtunes At This Precise Moment Guidelines

Now, without further ado, I would love to let you in in one of my favorite hobbies: list-making! I have several times created drafts of a "Top 100 Showtunes" List. Now, I would like to publish one of them here. I plan to post them in ten-song installments, hopefully one or two a week, but don't hold me to it. 

Before we begin there are several things I want to outline to help you follow my train of thought, but also to set my guidelines for myself-

1. This List will be officially titled "My Top 100 Favorite Showtunes". The keyword there: MY, as in these are MY favorite songs. The beauty of the the Broadway theatre world is that there is room for so many different opinions and preferences (I mean, I heard some people enjoyed Carrie…) so spare me any scathing comments that are harsh indictments of my personal taste.

2. Feel free to offer me suggestions, or to tell me your favorite musicals. If you look at my musicals that I am planning to listen, you'll know I definitely haven't even cracked the surface of the Broadway cast album.

3. In light of the above, I must say, I acquire and listen to new cast albums almost daily, which leads this list to change constantly, and further more, who's to say my tastes won't have changed by the end of this list, so, ok new title, "My Top 100 Favorite Showtunes At This Precise Moment". 

4. There are three basic aspects that I use to critically analyze show tunes: Music, Lyrics, and Emotion.

Emotion is the big one. Some songs have decent lyrics, and passionate music, but what really makes it a great song is the passion behind it, or the situation the character sings it from.

5. I love Finales and Act One Finales! They just seem to always garner a greater amount of emotion than most songs. So you'll find a lot of them. Also you'll see lots of love songs and ballads (predominantly female ones). Many funny songs don't exactly make the cut just because intentionally, the funny songs are hilarious, but eventually humor gets old. I often remark, funny gets old, but clever lives on.

Ok, ok, enough with the prologue (you know nothing kills a list like too much exposition), on with the show, err, uh list!