ebar.com – by Richard Dodds
Popular music stopped drawing its main sustenance from Broadway as the 1950s faded into the 60s. But those songs that made it through the gate can resonate much more enduringly than many of the titles that push their way up the Billboard charts. They have context, and when you set sexy gay parody lyrics to a melody from, say, West Side Story or South Pacific, you’re not just playfully changing the words. You’re also messing with the social order from which these musicals emerged.