Non-Broadway showstoppers (that I don't hate)

I thought this was a list of show-stopping prog rock. It isn’t.

Prog gave me the question and then utterly failed the test. I was after songs with Broadway-showstopper energy — the soaring kind, the ones that put you on the brink of tears — and the more I stress-tested, the more the prog fell away and something narrower and stranger stood up in its place.

The model is a Broadway song I had to leave out: Wicked’s “Defying Gravity.” Elphaba decides, mid-song, that she is through accepting limits — and the music levitates to prove it. The decision and the soar are the same event. Pippin’s “Corner of the Sky” does it too; so does Les Misérables’ “Who Am I?” That is the shape I am hunting. But those are Broadway, where a librettist engineered the decision into the plot. The game here is to find that lightning in the wild — in songs nobody wrote a second act around.

So this is no longer about prog rock. It became this:

Songs in which someone crosses a line inside themselves, and the music turns that crossing into an event.

The rules

Four tests. A song has to pass all four.

The simplest version of the whole thing is one question: does the song move the plot forward, or sing about the plot? A showstopper moves it — the decision happens inside the four minutes, and the song is the event, not the report. Everything else, however gorgeous, is singing about a plot that already happened. Elphaba defies and flees; Valjean decides to confess. (Moving the plot isn’t enough on its own — Sweeney Todd’s “Epiphany” moves it too, and it’s a decision, and it soars. It just decides toward slaughter. The turn has to be toward hope, which is the third test below.) The four tests below are just how I check whether a song moves the right way.

• It soars. The music lifts — climbs, carries you up, rather than down or sideways. This is the one I nearly lost along the way and it turns out to be load-bearing. Soaring is not loudness or epic length. It is vertical motion: the sense of being carried up and released. U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” is low and flat to me; Sinéad O’Connor’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” lifts off the floor. Same nominal subject — breaking out — opposite verdict, decided entirely by the ear.
• Someone crosses a line inside themselves. A present-tense interior decision — choosing, accepting, rejecting, declaring — not a story, a warning, a piece of advice, or an observation. The singer is usually talking to themselves, and we are overhearing it. This is a song sung in the closet, not from the stage. Telling someone else about your decision is not the decision — which is why all the persuade-the-passenger songs (Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” Journey’s cliché-ridden “The Search Is Over”) wash out.
• The decision turns toward hope. Not every interior crossing qualifies. Some decide toward despair, bitterness, or resignation. Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” crosses a line and soars doing it — but it is an addict deciding to go back to the bar, a turn toward the thing that is wrecking her. It fails here, on direction alone. The ones I want are an overcoming — brink-of-tears, hopeful but not maudlin, a turn toward. Often it is the bravest kind of hope: the decision we suspect, listening, will be hard to keep, sung as if it will hold.
• The decision lands — and landing is not the same as working out. The song commits to the choice and the music seals it. Whether the singer keeps the promise is the next song’s problem. Tori Amos decides to stop crucifying herself and goes right back to it on the next track. Pippin’s hero decides to search and then does a string of naive things. The taxi driver might find a terrific girl on his very next fare. None of that touches the song. The four minutes are the unit. The crossing happens inside them, or it doesn’t.

And a fifth rule, which is really the first: I have to love it. This is not a theory of music. It is my party, and I reserve the right to fire the DJ. Some songs pass every test and I cannot stand them — out they go, mostly unnamed, to protect the guilty. The rule cuts both ways, and you will see it cut both ways below.

The four tests sort into a simple grid — soaring on one axis, deciding on the other:

Only the bullseye — the showstopper — makes the list. The other three are where the heartbreak lives, because some of my favorite songs in the world sit in them.

The showstoppers

What survived. Tellingly, none of it is prog — the center of gravity turned out to be singer-songwriters, and a striking share of them women, crossing a line and surviving it.

• Tori Amos — “Crucify”
• Joan Armatrading — “Me Myself I”
• Sara Bareilles — “Brave”
• Kate Bush — “Running Up That Hill”; “Cloudbusting”
• Crosby, Stills & Nash — “Southern Cross” †
• The Decemberists — “Annan Water” ‡
• Florence + the Machine — “Shake It Out”
• for KING & COUNTRY — “Joy”
• Jesus Christ Superstar — “Gethsemane” §
• Peter Gabriel — “Solsbury Hill”
• Anna Kendrick — “Get Back Up Again”
• Mandisa — “Born for This (Esther)”
• Fleetwood Mac — “Go Your Own Way”
• Sinéad O’Connor — “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
• Rachael Sage — “Brave Dancing”; “Blue Sky Days”
• Sia — “Unstoppable”
• Nina Simone — “Feeling Good” *
• Cat Stevens — “On the Road to Find Out”

* “Feeling Good” gets an asterisk. It is technically a Broadway song — from The Roar of the Greasepaint — but Simone un-Broadways it completely. The recording is hers, wild, nobody’s second act. The performance is the qualifier, not the publishing.

† “Southern Cross” is the borderline that earns its place by teaching the rule. Most of it is a sailing-after-heartbreak travelogue — storytelling, which the grid would reject. But the whole voyage resolves on one line: so I’m sailing for tomorrow, my dreams are a-dying. Dreams dead, love anchored to someone gone, and he chooses to sail anyway. The soar is on the deciding. A song can story along for four minutes and still cross a line, as long as the line gets crossed and the music knows it did. (Some of the hope here is the death of the dream — the trade of a fantasy for something more real. I can relate. And I will live life.)

‡ “Annan Water” (from The Hazards of Love) is the rare concept-album crossing. William reaches an impassable river and offers his own life for safe passage to save Margaret — you may have my precious bones on my return. He knows the cost and crosses anyway. The album later drowns both lovers in a joint suicide (“The Drowned”), which is deliberately not here — sacrificing yourself to save another is a crossing toward love; dying together to escape is a crossing toward oblivion, the Sweeney Todd quadrant. Same character, same album, opposite turns. The song is the unit, and within it, his is a sacrifice.

§ “Gethsemane” (from Jesus Christ Superstar) is eligible by the same provenance logic as “Feeling Good”: it was a concept album in 1970 before it was ever staged, born on vinyl, not written for the theater. And it is the deepest crossing on the list — Jesus alone in the dark, frightened, arguing with a silent God, and choosing, against his own terror, to go to the cross. Before I change my mind is the sound of a decision made while it is still reversible. Not faith instructing; faith deciding.

A distinction worth keeping

“Me Myself I” is in; “Closer to Fine” — my favorite song of the entire 1990s — is not. They look alike and they are not alike, and the difference is the second rule.

“Closer to Fine” reports a conclusion already reached: the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine. The Indigo Girls crossed the line some time ago and are handing you the moral in the present tense, like a proverb. That is teaching, not deciding. “Me Myself I” enacts the choice in real time — the verses brood (home alone, the phone not ringing), and the chorus decides, defiantly, against that loneliness. One song tells you what it learned. The other crosses the line while you watch. I cut a song I love to keep the rule honest. That is the rule working.

Why so little Christian music?

You would assume a list about hope-as-decision would be thick with Christian songs. It mostly isn’t — and the problem is never Christianity. It is the interpretations that smother the interior crossing: the prudish, the preachy, the Pollyannish, the condemnatory, the dour. Each is a different way of refusing the real decision. Preachy and condemnatory point outward, telling others. Pollyannish skips the cost; dour is all cost and no overcoming. Prudish won’t let the feeling soar.

Two songs prove the vein is there. for KING & COUNTRY’s “Joy” — the time has come to make a choice, and I choose joy — looks like choosing a feeling, but choosing joy is itself an act, and the act moves the singer. Mandisa’s “Born for This” sets Esther at the line: if I perish, I perish, a woman deciding, alone and in private, to risk death for her people. That is the deepest version of the rule — not a mood but a crossing at mortal cost — and the music soars to meet it. Both do what the rule asks: a choice, at cost, toward hope, said out loud, to oneself. Faith in the closet, not on the street corner. That, it turns out, is the same rule as all the others.

The sulk — decides, won’t soar

Real interior decisions that stay low. Often great. Just not lifted.

• Rush — “Limelight” (a weary acceptance of exposure — the decision is real, the hope is thin)
• Harry Chapin — “Taxi” (“I put the bill in my shirt” — a decision not to cross the line; resignation pocketed and driven off)
• Tracy Chapman — “Fast Car” (a soundtrack of my twenties — but the escape deflates on purpose: “leave tonight or live and die this way”)

Spectacle — soars, decides nothing

Endless, glorious, and not this. The largest reject pile by far. ELO is the patron saint of the quadrant — gorgeous lift, nobody crosses anything.

• ELO — “Mr. Blue Sky” (weather, not a decision)
• Bill Withers — “Lovely Day” (a mood arrives, unearned by any crossing)
• Steppenwolf — “Magic Carpet Ride” (love it; it does not belong here)
• Renaissance — “Carpet of the Sun” (the best prog candidate, and it falls short — inspiring, uplifting, an invitation to find what we left behind, but nobody crosses a line; the sun simply comes up)

Storytelling & observation — neither

Fine songs, wrong building.

• Styx — “Mr. Roboto” (the great impostor — “the time has come at last to throw away the mask,” and then it doesn’t; the song ends on the disguise. It dangles the crossing and withholds it. Concealment, where a showstopper reveals.)
• Deep Purple — “Child in Time” (warning and prophecy, dread without ascent)

The most painful residents of this quadrant — Rush’s “Red Barchetta,” Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” — I love too much to file as mere examples. They are below, under what’s out.

What’s out?

The rule cuts both ways. One song I love, the rules won’t let me keep; one song that passes every rule, I won’t keep anyway. The list is a self-portrait wearing a taxonomy’s clothes, and it should admit it.

A. Out by personal veto. Passes every test, and still doesn’t make it, because rule five is rule one.

• Bruce Springsteen — “The Promised Land.” A clean creed — present-tense, interior, hopeful, soaring. It passes. I am from New Jersey and I just don’t love Bruce, and the party is mine. Out. (My theory: he sings to the crowd, to Mary, to the band — outward, a stadium. The showstopper I love is sung to oneself and overheard — a closet.)

B. Some of my very favorites. Cut by the rules, not by taste — which is the harder cut to make.

• Indigo Girls — “Closer to Fine” (my favorite song of the entire 1990s; see the distinction above — it reports a conclusion rather than crossing the line, and out it goes)
• Rush — “Red Barchetta” (a short story set to music; the one that hurts most)
• Joni Mitchell — “Both Sides Now” (off the grid entirely — she could read a phone book and it would be art)

A call for more!

This is where you come in. The list is short on purpose — but it shouldn’t be this short, and I keep finding I’ve missed obvious things (Solsbury Hill sat under my nose). Two seams in particular look unmined:

Christian music. You’d assume a list about hope-as-decision would be thick with it. It isn’t, but the vein is there. The genuine ones will be the songs that cross a line inside someone, not the ones that praise outward or instruct the congregation.

Prog rock. Here is the part that still astonishes me: not one prog song made the list. Not one. My best candidate, Renaissance’s “Carpet of the Sun,” soars as gorgeously as anything here and still falls short — it lifts, but nobody crosses a line. Rock opera and concept albums finally delivered (“Gethsemane,” “Annan Water”), but prog proper came back empty-handed. Surely somewhere in all those side-long epics there is a single genuine crossing. Find me one. I would love to be wrong.

Send me what I’ve missed: jdonaldson@smu.edu.sg.

Hear the showstoppers on Spotify

The bullseye list, as a Spotify playlist. Updated by hand when the list above changes.