Mostly, the choreography acts as sidekick to the lyrics, illustrating the musical scenarios and sentiments.
Those extremes, if that's what they are, can co-exist – they resonate in their own musical contexts as sentiment or ritual; they represent tuning systems as ways of structuring phenomena; or they stand for particular forms of social order.
The Hollywood part is that Mr. Sanborn impersonates movie stars (Jimmy Stewart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery) as he inhabits the figures surrounding the life of David; the Broadway part is that it's a stage musical, though its sentiment is closer to Las Vegas's.
All three works traffic in familiar song forms, all exhibit a relish for hummable melodies, and all take as their themes the soaring twin sentiments that musicals have celebrated forever: the need to pursue a dream and the transcendent power of love.
A similar sentiment — Franklin as musical and spiritual sustenance — is expressed by the British singer Rumer on the song "Aretha," from her lovely debut album, "Seasons of My Soul," released last year in the U.K. I guess you really know you're a legend when people have been paying tribute to you in song for more than 30 years.
A majority of the nominated records — and their all-important accompanying videos — are as concerned with romantic hookups as musical hooks, given the sexually charged sentiments at the heart of "Blurred Lines," "Get Lucky" and "Locked Out of Heaven".
As a result, what is earned sentiment in the novel becomes mere sentimentality in the musical.
"Dreams are coming true each day" is a leitmotif, though how can a critic not succumb to despair when confronted with musical numbers of nonsensical enthusiasm, hoary sentiment and jejune rhymes?
Taylor, who is gearing up to return to Broadway this fall in the musical adaptation of "SpongeBob SquarePants," echoed those sentiments.
Cooder's songwriting exhibits liberal and populist sentiments and draws on older musical sources such as broadside ballads and country blues.
