Starlight Express＜Zoetrope Vinyl＞

When Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Starlight Express opened in the West End in 1984, it was accompanied by an original London cast album released on Polydor Records. Three years later, when Starlight Express opened in New York, no original Broadway cast album appeared. Instead, Lloyd Webber helped put together a various artists/studio cast version, Music and Songs From Starlight Express, on which such performers as El DeBarge and Richie Havens sang over tracks produced by Phil Ramone. Such an approach was appropriate to the pop-rock style of the music, and probably was intended to break out a pop hit. Onstage, Starlight Express' music was swamped by its visual style, with its performers roller skating around the stage in their futuristic costumes. Minus the staging and given overtly contemporary pop arrangements dominated by synthesizer parts, however, the music still sounded bland, even when an expressive vocalist like Havens or session singer Marc Cohn (years before his commercial breakthrough) was leading the charge. Essentially Lloyd Webber's attempt to get in on the Flashdance/Footloose sound of the mid-1980s, the music remained the least intriguing part of Starlight Express. [As a bonus, the album contains a previously unreleased 1977 recording of "Engine of Love," featuring Earl Jordan and produced by Lloyd Webber that the composer described as "the grandfather of the whole project." It has more of a disco feel than the rest of the album.] ~ William Ruhlmann