The Music of Waitress

Today, Waitress: The Musical opened for previews on Broadway. It’s been a long journey for the musical based on the 2007 movie of the same name, the first musical with an all-female creative team. You can read more about its path to Broadway in this New York Times spot this last week. The article also profiles Sara Bareilles, the composer of Waitress’s music, who made the leap to musical from popular music. Bareilles is certainly not the first to make this leap (see my post about Sting and his Broadway musical The Last Ship, which failed after a few months, as many musicals do). Nor will she be the last. Musicals based on movies have also been a big trend, though very few of them seem to do well in the long run; a notable exception was Kinky Boots, Cyndi Lauper’s Tony award-winning musical.

So like Kinky Boots, here we have another musical based on a movie by popular songwriter that’s a newbie to Broadway. How’s Waitress’s music? While a cast album hasn’t come out yet, like Sting with The Last Ship, Bareilles released versions of the songs of Waitress, with herself singing them, before the musical came out, so we have a taste of the final product.

I think there are at least three creative obstacles that a songwriter who is from the popular music world needs to overcome to succeed on Broadway:

1. Making different songs match different voices, instead of being all the songwriter's own voice,
2. Writing songs that fit an emotion and plot narrative arch, and
3. Taking the pop musical style and merging it with a theater musical style.
   

Did Bareilles overcome them? Let’s take a closer look.

1. Different voices for different characters

Bareilles does a great job of writing characters, especially those apart from the main ones. For example, in “When He Sees Me,” the music has very persistent pounding for the worrying, OCD part of the character; stutteringly-like phrase extensions for nervousness; and a quick transiting to a romantic latin rhythm section for the warmth of wanted love. Also, in “Never Ever Getting Rid of Me,” the music conveys the quickness, pushiness, and fun of this character, again with clever lyrics. I think Bareilles has some experience at writing song that are fiction, so this probably wasn’t a big leap for her, but she did well.

2. Emotion and plot arc

I think Bareilles does a good job encapsulating emotions and narrative arc into songs. For example, “Door Number Three” and “Opening Up” both have some clever lyric writing that sets up emotional and plot points at the same time (I especially like the “heartbeat” section of “Opening Up” that has her voice imitated a heart, while simultaneous hinting at other plot points). However, I’m a bit disappointed that there aren’t more thematic music returns, which can be a great way to infuse emotion, especially late in a musical.

3. Channeling pop into theater

I’m not sure that the music on this album really lends itself to visually-stunning set pieces that are important in musicals. With few exceptions (such as “Opening Up”), most are confessional songs; these are normal for singer-songwriter pop songs, but a musical requires more production, on-stage song sharing, and drama to succeed. Even the duet “Bad Idea,” while uptempo and exciting, with handclaps and a dash of humor, seems more a confessional than an emotional decision-making plot point or a production number. “You Matter to Me” could carry a dramatic emotional bump in context, but as a song, it doesn’t show as much variety and inspiration as the other songs on the album/musical; I really want the overlapping melodies at the end to redeem the song, but they aren’t as complicated as I would like for a such a long set up, and so don’t quite overcome the humdrum. “Everything Changes” might be a great set piece song, especially the chorus where the song projects the plot out into our own lives, but it still ends up being a confessional that peters out instead of a final plot exclamation. Of course, often songs that reveal too much of the plot are left off these type of advanced albums, so maybe there will be something more; also, the article mentioned that the music is still being tweaked, so perhaps there will be some improvement in the final product.

Conclusion

I think at as album, with many strong, varied songs and clever lyrics, is a strong as other Bareilles albums, though perhaps without a “hit” song strong enough to make a big splash. But it is hard to see how the songs will translate to a stage where Bareilles isn’t singing from behind her piano. We’ll have to see.

Have you seen Waitress live? What did you think?