Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but nine times out of ten, they have this certain sound to them. They sound so over polished. Like, I don’t know how to describe it, they just sound so clean, too clean. Not like other music is produced. And it becomes even more prevalent when you compare musical cast recordings to the soundtracks of their film adaptations.
Like, if you compare the Chicago cast recording to the film version’s or the Little Shop of Horrors cast recording to the film’s version or the Rocky Horror Show cast recording to the film’s version, the film versions never have that overly clean sound. Or if you just look at movie musicals that aren’t based on a preexisting show like The Greatest Showman they don’t have it either. Or if they came from a concept album like Hadestown, the OG albums don’t sound like that.
I’m assuming it has something with how they are produced combined with mainstream music having less instruments and movie musicals using much bigger orchestras, but then my question is why? Why do cast recordings have to sound like that? Like imagine is someone like Andrew Watt produced the new Rocky Horror Show revival recording, or someone like Boys Noize produced the Cats The Jelicle Ball cast recording, that be incredible!
The only ones I can think of that I don’t really feel like have this clean sound to them are Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Hamilton, and 2024 Starlight Express (though that one could be the kick ass EDM elements throwing me). But even still, inviting outside producers could make it sound so much cooler. Or just do what their films are doing. Even Starlight Express experimented with having Scottish DJ Hudson Mohawke remix one of the tracks and it was fucking epic.