My wife has been riding her stationary bicycle in the basement lately. While she’s riding she’s been watching musicals with our daughter, so I’ve been hearing The Sound of Music and Damn Yankees wafting up the basement stairs.

So what the heck, let’s celebrate the glory of the American musical.

The Lovehaters “Look At Me I’m Sandra Dee (Reprise)” (from Grease)
This comes to us from an indie CD that’s a tribute to Grease. It’s called Down to GREASE on Holiday.

I remember that after the Grease movie left the theaters my mom got a great deal on a jean jacket with the movie’s logo embroidered on the back. I cut out the embroidery and wore the thing for years even though it still had a very faint outline of that logo.

Gotan Project/Sarah Vaughan “Whatever Lola Wants” (from Damn Yankees)
Also known as The Only Musical Straight Men Will Sing Along To. I don’t consider remixes to be covers, but since Sarah Vaughan wasn’t in the original Broadway cast of Damn Yankees this one qualifies in my book.

Little Richard “I Feel Pretty” (From West Side Story)
Boy, does he feel pretty. I don’t think that any other man could pull this one off.

Captian Tractor “If I Were A Rich Man” (From Fiddler On The Roof)
I almost posted a version of this song by the Magnetic Fields that’s all ukulele and clinically depressed singing. I went with this one because it keeps the joy of the original version while still bringing something new to the song.

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes “My Favorite Things” (from The Sound of Music)
The lyrics to this song have always bothered me. It’s like Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the whole thing by picking random words out of a rhyming dictionary. Are brown paper packages tied up with string really anybody’s favorite thing? That one’s not even in my top 1000.