The World of Musicals

When I was a little girl (or more little), I watched Grease and became entranced with the idea of music and a storyline. Magical, I thought. I linked the wonderful soundtrack directly to Sandy and Danny's love and found myself wanting to watch every musical ever invented; wanting to witness every true love story portrayed through song and dance. I quickly discovered the world of musicals.

I was soon happily drowning myself in the melodies of Defying Gravity, Footloose and Time of my Life, buying every soundtrack with my pocket money and re-watching Grease every week. It wasn't just the music and dance that made me happy. It was the morals that were brought with them. In Grease, Danny and Sandy may be an unlikely couple but they worked. In Wicked, it shows that a best friend will always be there for you and in Hairspray, Tracy Turnblad isn't a girl that you could pin down no matter how hard you tried: She has a dream!

The tragedy of this is something I like to imagine to be a lie (it's not)... *Builds tension and whispers*: I can't sing.

I can't dance or act either but it's the singing that makes everything about musicals so alive in my eyes. However, there is a moral (prepare yourself) to this story that I discovered not too long ago.

My mum and I have a number one hobby of putting on the Hairspray soundtrack and dancing and singing to our hearts' content as we bake. I see the image you're seeing, and, well, sadly, the image you are seeing is exactly it. A while ago now, as we sung Without Love whilst baking butterfly cakes, grabbing the air with our hands and cracking eggs in time to the beat, I felt a pinch of jealousy at those who can sing as I ruined a Hairspray classic and said so to my mum.

"As long as you're enjoying yourself, what does it matter?" my mother replied.

While I paused to respond, I smiled. She was right, of course. If you're doing something you love; why does it matter if you're not too great at it? Like in Harispray: Tracy Turnblad liked to dance, so she did! Elphaba, in Wicked, wanted to change the world... so she tried. Yes, okay, they were all talented too, but they overcame obstacles willing them to stop - but they didn't!

As I put the cakes in the oven, my mum took a breath. "But, you... You shouldn't ever sing."

Melodies & Jazz Hands,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

P.S. I originally wrote this post for Simona's blog HERE but I started writing a post about musicals the other day, and realised I had already written what I wanted to say, and Simona said it was perfectly okay for me to post it on my blog too so here we are!