The TV Musical: How Singing on the Small Screen Became So Popular

Who doesn’t love a good musical?

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist airs its official premiere this Sunday, February 16 on NBC with back-to-back episodes to present us with a new take on telling a heartfelt story with some help from the Top 40 hits of yesterday and today.

While it may feel like the musical TV genre has always been around, truth be told, aside from children’s programming, turning on your television to find a drama series with characters breaking into song only became common practice within the last decade or so.

In the spirit of the recent musical explosion that’s become an entire television genre itself, let’s take a trip down memory lane to see how it became so common to see people singing on the small screen!

Here is a brief history of the TV musical as we know it.

A Humble Beginning in 1982

You could say that it all started with a film about a special arts high school in New York City.

Fame hit theaters in 1980 and was considered a success, so much so that in 1982 NBC turned the film into a weekly drama series, airing on Thursday nights at 8:00 pm.

Critics loved the new show starring original film choreographer Debbie Allen, and while Fame’s ratings weren’t fantastic, the series earned multiple Emmy awards, as well as won the Golden Globe for Best Series: Musical or Comedy in both 1982 and 1983.

When Fame ended its small-screen run in 1987, the idea of a primetime musical series seemed to have faded away.

Cop Rock: 1990’s Greatest TV Failure

TV musicals fading away could have been the case altogether, but Steven Bochco, who at the time was known for shows like Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, had a crazy idea that changed the game.

What if music was incorporated into a weekly police procedural show?

And in 1990, Cop Rock became a reality.

Remembered largely as a failure, Cop Rock was an ABC show that followed the LAPD through arrests and trials, with some original songs and dances sprinkled in. (Think about a jury delivering a “guilty” verdict with a big gospel number — that was Cop Rock in a nutshell.)

ABC canceled the Bochco experiment after only 11 episodes (you can, however, find bits of it online), despite the series winning 2 Emmy awards in 1991.

After Cop Rock, the idea of adding original songs to a scripted series made for television seemed to end there, with the exception of children’s and family programming.

It may very well have ended with Cop Rock, until sci-fi and fantasy television shows saw an opportunity to use music to spice up long-running series with a “very special episode.”

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Shows Experiment with Musicals

Xena: Warrior Princess aired the episode “The Bitter Suite” in 1997, an episode during which Xena and Gabrielle are brought to the Land of Illusia to work out their recent familial problems that have torn their friendship apart — with music and lyrics.

The episode would go on to earn Xena: Warrior Princess several Emmy award nominations.

Ally McBeal followed this musical trend with a very special musical episode of their own in 2000, entitled (aptly) “The Musical, Almost.”

“The Musical, Almost” featured music by Randy Newman and showcased Jane Krakowski’s talents (wisely) while the rest of the cast gave it their all, and the episode was praised for its efforts.

Though the Ally McBeal and Xena: Warrior Princess musical episodes flew somewhat under the radar, what came next was the real game-changer for the TV musical genre.

A Vampire Slayer Solidifies a Genre

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6 Episode 7,  “Once More, With Feeling,” had heavy promotion ahead of its airing. The episode was teased as a supersized musical event, as the episode would run ten minutes longer than the usual hour.

Fans wondered how Joss Whedon was going to incorporate original songs into the tangled web of stories that had been building within the show’s sixth season, much of which dealt with the Scooby gang pulling Buffy out of a hell dimension, only to find that they’ve brought back a depressed Buffy who was actually in heaven. Plus, vampires and demons.

Fans worried that “Once More, With Feeling” would be a disaster.

And then it wasn’t.

“Once More, With Feeling” was charming, heartfelt, and stocked to the brim with nods to old musicals, while respecting the boundaries of television and the boundaries of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The episode pushed each character into their next story arc seamlessly and even ended with the curtain closing on a new, shocking potential romance.

A slightly edited “encore” of the episode was shown later that week, after the episode became an overnight success, with a soundtrack release soon to follow that would go on to hit no. 49 on the Billboard 200, and no. 3 in Billboard Top Soundtracks.

Success Breeds More Success (and a Few Failures)

Soon after the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s musical episode, more and more TV series took turns at special musical episodes.

For every musical episode success story, such as Psych’s “Psych: The Musical” and Scrubs’ “My Musical” (“Guy Love” remains one of the funniest songs ever written for television), there were failures, such as 7th Heaven’s “Red Socks” and Grey’s Anatomy’s “Song Beneath the Song” (which many fans have chosen to forget ever happened, for some reason).

Oz, That 70’s Show, and Fringe all took their own turns turning up the beat, as well, using the genre to tell new stories and give viewers glimpses of their favorite stars doing something a little different.

Even shows like Supernatural, Once Upon a Time, Supergirl, The Flash, and more have tried their hand at a musical episode, showing that any genre of series can pull off the musical if their writers are brave enough and their cast is up for the challenge.

One of the most surprising musical episodes to come from this era was It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s “The Nightman Cometh,” which spawned not only critical acclaim, but sent the cast on a multi-city tour to perform the episode live for audiences.

Glee Changes Television

In 2009, Glee premiered on Fox.

Glee was an hour-long dramedy about a high school Spanish teacher who works to relive his own glee club glory days by resurrecting the school’s nearly defunct glee club.

Each episode featured 3-5 covers of popular songs, sung by the cast, led by Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison. Each episode also featured meticulously choreographed numbers, essentially amounting to the cast putting on an actual musical every week of filming.

The show became an overnight pop-culture hit, with the cast popping up everywhere. Their songs played in every shopping mall across the country, they produced multiple albums and merchandise, and they even had a tour that kept the cast busy for an entire summer singing music from the show on stages around the world.

The series would go on to win Emmy Awards, Golden Globes, Teen Choice Awards, People’s Choice Awards, and ALMA awards among others — the show was unstoppable and quite decorated.

Glee proved what Fame and Cop Rock had tried to make a case for decades earlier.

There was an audience for an hour-long weekly musical series, and they were ready for more.

Along Came Smash…

After a few seasons of Glee’s wholesome teen story, some viewers were looking for something a bit more mature – and a bit more centered around an actual musical.

NBC answered the call with the Steven Spielberg-produced show, Smash, a drama centered around the production of Bombshell, a musical about Marilyn Monroe.

The cast was superb, the original music was leaps and bounds above the radio covers that Glee was churning out, and the drama had higher stakes.

In just two seasons, the series raked up quite a few award nominations, as well as an Emmy win.

Sadly, Smash could not sustain the success of the Glee juggernaut but continued to show that the audience for musicals on TV was there, even if the show was not Glee.

A Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Takes TV Musicals to the Next Level

In 2015, TV was burnt out on musicals. Glee and Smash had seen massive success and then fizzled out as the shows ended and viewers began looking for more anti-heroes and smart comedies.

Enter Rachel Bloom, best known for her comedy on YouTube, and Aline Brosh McKenna, best known as the screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada.

Together they brought Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to television, a series about a high-powered lawyer who followed her high-school crush across the country and attempted to win him back with the help of her new best friend, as she also caught the eye of HIS best friend.

Also, the protagonist, Rebecca Bunch, was suffering from a deep mysterious psychological disorder and she, along with the rest of the cast, mostly worked out their issues with fantasies and songs in their heads.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend took what Glee did to an entirely new level — complete originality.

Where Glee wrote stories and added other artists’ known music to those stories, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend wrote completely new material for the 2-4 songs in each episode, all of which moved storylines, provided character insight, and allowed the cast to showcase their talents every week.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend also provided television with a new kind of anti-hero in Rebecca, and her journey to better mental health, combined with a killer soundtrack, made the show one of the best of the decade.

What Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did for the TV musical genre was to pick up where Glee left off, and also where they fell short, by creating a mature, smart, dramedy-driven weekly musical.

The TV Musical Genre is Breaking Free…

The writers on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend normalized the genre, by taking some of the quirkiness out and replacing it with phenomenal storytelling, and by removing gimmicks and replacing them with heart and soul.

It’s because of this carefully constructed balancing act that the TV musical genre is now thriving with shows like High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, Perfect Harmony, and more popping up with their own original stories and takes on what it means to be a weekly television musical.

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, in particular, has already shown in just one episode, that with the right amount of heart, compelling stories, and an incredibly talented cast, there are constantly ways to kick the TV musical up a notch. 

The TV musical genre didn’t happen overnight — it took decades of attempts and experiments.

This genre was built from series’ building on what they’ve learned from those who came before them, whether it was a gospel singing jury, a one-off episode of a long-running show about a vampire slayer, or an unstoppable teen juggernaut paving the way for a musical to be a normal occurrence on your weekly television screen.

—

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

30 Favorite Network TV Shows of the Decade