"...the number of weeks at No. 1 for albums of Broadway-originated material surpasses all the weeks at No. 1 of albums by the Beatles, [Frank] Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, and the Monkees combined.”

When Broadway Became Broadway

How the embrace of other media made New York’s theater district iconic

The centrality of the Broadway musical to postwar American popular culture cannot be exaggerated. Consider this statistic cited by Maslon: “Between 1945 and 1969—25 of the most fertile and febrile years in popular music—13 different original-cast albums hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts.…If one factors in the soundtrack albums directly derived from Broadway scores during those same decades (Oklahoma, West Side Story, etc.), the number of weeks at No. 1 for albums of Broadway-originated material surpasses all the weeks at No. 1 of albums by the Beatles, [Frank] Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, and the Monkees combined.”