Editor’s note: Arachnophonia (“Arachno” = spider / “-phonia” = sound) is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
All links included in these posts will take you to either the library catalog record for the item in question or to additional relevant information from around the web.
Today’s installment of Arachnophonia is by student manager Danny (class of 2023) and features the Broadway musical Waitress. Thanks, Danny!
Waitress: The Musical holds a very strong place in my heart and might have the strongest memories and feelings attached to it than any other album could do in my life. And it all started pretty recently.
My senior year of high school, I gave up playing club soccer for the spring. I had played soccer year-round my whole life and wanted to take a break from club sports. I finished my senior season with the high school team as captain and thought that would be a fitting end to the journey. So, I did track and field in the spring to spruce it up and try and build on my winter times (which I had done for 4 years). Since the practices did not eat up nearly as much time as soccer, I still felt I needed something to do.
And so, through a few of my friends who were involved, I somehow got myself roped into joining a school musical (42nd Street). It was more intimidating than anything I had ever done, given I had never tapped, danced, sang, nor acted in my life. It was so out of my comfort zone and I felt worlds apart from anyone else. Given that I try to immerse and be the best that I can at anything I do, naturally, I tried to get myself adjusted to the world of arts.
I basically went to Playbill and found every contemporary musical that was currently playing on Broadway and listened to every single album. Some albums were played more than just once, as I continually listened to them until the lyrics were etched into my brain. Even if I was not totally invested in Broadway like my friends, I at least wanted to know everything about the culture and what I was getting myself into just as I do with any job or sport.
And through it, I heard Waitress. And I listened to it over and over and over and over and over. It became my second most-listened-to album in 2019 on Spotify and three of the songs were in my top 5. The lyrics and the songs were just ultimately too good and did not sound like a traditional Broadway musical songs. When I was younger, I felt a lot of Broadway was dance-heavy numbers, with raging horns and jazz beats, lights, eccentric acting (I did not like stage acting, I felt it was too jittery or not as deep as a film), and crazy costumes. And yet, Waitress was kind of the complete opposite. It took music from Sara Bareilles, a mainstream artist that was consistently played on the radio and turned it into a story. I was hooked. I obviously realized there were tons of other musicals like this, but it was the first one that really opened my eyes to another side of theatre.
To make a long story short, it became a habit to listen to the music, and I got pretty good at a couple of the songs on piano. The year I started listening, all of a sudden, an announcement was made that the show was closing January 5th, 2020. I was lowkey upset because I wanted to go so bad to the show, but I would never want to drop the pricey amount to go watch it live.
And then, like the grace of God’s warm light, I was bestowed with three tickets to watch the show. It was gifted as a birthday present. Me and two others got to watch the show two weeks before close, a week before Christmas, and made a whole day trip. We took a bus to NYC at noon, walked around the city for a couple hours, ice skated in Central Park, went out to eat at a nice restaurant, saw the tree at Rockefeller Center at night, and then saw the show at night. The show was even better in person and I got to watch it with people I loved.
Ultimately, after that moment, I knew that album had other sentimental value that could never be replaced. However, a couple of months afterward, I had not actually listened to the album again. Things happened that almost ruined the musical for me and the memories I had attached to it, but I put a positive twist on it and tried to forget some of the negatives.