Rent Original Broadway Cast Recording CD - 2 Disc Set

In 1996, with many Broadway theatres offering revivals, movie adaptations, and Hollywood star vehicles, a new kind of musical arrived on the scene. That musical was Rent, the story of squatters, junkies, performance artists, struggling musicians, drag queens, aspiring filmmakers, and HIV-positives. It was undoubtedly among the defining pop cultural events of the year and drew a new generation of theatre-goers to Broadway. Rent's brilliance was recognized with four Tony awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Transposing Puccini's 100-year-old opera La Boheme into modern day Bohemia (19th-century Paris's Left Bank becomes late-20th-century New York's East Village where the scourge of tuberculosis becomes the plague of AIDS) Rent celebrates life among the young, sick, and unconventional.

While Broadway shows are hardly the place for authentic portrayals of the latest marginalized hipsters, composer Jonathan Larson (who died at age 36, days before his musical opened) managed to sculpt vivid characters and scenes that bring Avenue A as close as it will ever come to 42nd Street. And by telling a socially relevant story of living without the guarantee of a future (renting, that is), Larson does his own little bit to define an X'ed generation.

For the majority of us who won't be seeing Rent anytime soon, the Original Cast Recording is more than just an after-show souvenir. Well-packaged with a complete libretto, the two-CD set is a worthwhile album separate of live performance. Full of songs that are funny and catchy, inspiring and touching, smart and hip and not overly sentimental, Rent mixes showtune pop with elements of rock, R&B, dance, gospel, and tango to make one of the best albums of the year--certainly the best rock opera in decades. La vie boheme, indeed. -- Roni Sarig

Track Listings:

Rent Disc 1

01 - Tune up
02 - Voice Mail #1
03 - Tune up
04 - Rent
05 - You Okay Honey
06 - Tune up
07 - One Song Glory
08 - Light My Candle
09 - Voice Mail #2
10 - Today 4 U
11 - You'll See
12 - Tango - Maureen
13 - Life Support
14 - Out Tonight
15 - Another Day
16 - Will I
17 - On the Street
18 - Santa Fe
19 - I'll Cover You
20 - We're Okay
21 - Christmas Bells
22 - Over the Moon
23 - La Vie Boheme
24 - I Should Tell You
25 - La Vie Boheme B


Rent Disc 2

01 - Seasons of Love
02 - Happy New Year
03 - Voice Mail #3
04 - Happy New Year B
05 - Take Me or Leave Me
06 - Seasons of Love B
07 - Without You
08 - Voice Mail #4
09 - Contact
10 - I'll Cover You (Reprise)
11 - Halloween
12 - Goodbye Love
13 - What You Own
14 - Voice Mail #5
15 - Finale
16 - Your Eyes
17 - Finale B
18 - Seasons of Love