A new cast album of the musical 13 will be released on November 24 by Ghostlight Records, packaged for the first time with a bonus karaoke disc. The new double-CD will reflect the final song order as it appeared in the Broadway production of the show, plus two bonus tracks (the cut songs “Here I Come” and “Opportunity”) and an exclusive “accompaniment” (karaoke) CD of nine songs, the first of its kind. According to a Ghostlight news release, “The Accompaniment CD even includes songs in different keys, so boys with changing voices can have an option.”
Ghostlight initially recorded and released the cast album of 13 before performances began at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on September 16, 2008. (The musical ran for 105 performances, closing on January 4, 2009.) For a holiday 2009 release, the original tracks were re-mastered and rearranged to match the final Broadway production, and an innovative sing-along CD was added.
"Both 'Here I Come' and 'Opportunity' were cut from the score before opening night, and so those two recordings have been taken out of the regular running order and are included here as bonus tracks," composer Jason Robert Brown explained in a statement. "We've added a song called 'Being A Geek' that was in the show in its premiere incarnation in Los Angeles but never made it to Broadway; we also wrote a new version of 'Opportunity' that comes much earlier in the show—both of those recordings are now included, in their correct order on the CD. (Special thanks to Graham Phillips and Liz Gillies for coming back eight months later to record those new tracks!)"
The 13 cast album was produced by Jeffrey Lesser and Brown and executive-produced by Ghostlight President Kurt Deutsch and Bill Rosenfield. Ghostlight previously released the hugely successful cast album of The Last Five Years as well as Brown’s solo album, Wearing Someone Else's Clothes.