25 Broadway Opening Numbers That Define Musical Theater Post-Millennium
Broadway.com's 25th anniversary celebration continues with another roundup that defines the past 25 years of Broadway. We've made our way through cultural milestones and standout Tony moments. Now we're taking a musical detour through some of the greatest opening numbers that have graced Broadway stages in the past quarter century. Travel chronologically through our list of 25 favorites—numbers that grabbed us by the throat from the first chords and never let go.
1. “Queenie Was a Blonde” - The Wild Party (2000)
Michael John LaChiusa
Quick history lesson. The 1999-2000 theatrical season saw two musicals based on the same narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March. A version scored by Andrew Lippa opened off-Broadway in February of 2000, another version scored by Michael John LaChiusa opened on Broadway that April and both have opening numbers called “Queenie Was a Blonde.” This is our moment of appreciation for LaChiusa’s brassy, vaudevillian introduction to Queenie, a showgirl attracted to “violent and vicious men,” played on Broadway by Toni Collette. The cast also boasted Mandy Patinkin, Eartha Kitt, Tonya Pinkins, Norm Lewis, Marc Kudisch, Nathan Lee Graham…the list goes on. The show, which ran for only three months, did not. But the opening number explains how it still managed to nab seven Tony nominations.
2. “Oh, The Thinks You Can Think!” - Seussical (2000)
Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty
Just before the millennium, Ahrens and Flaherty won a Tony for their breathtaking and politically incisive Ragtime score, featuring one of the greatest opening numbers of all time. A Dr. Seuss musical wouldn’t have been anyone’s first guess for their next Broadway project, but the pair’s skill for melodically cracking open a world is on full display in this sweet ode to imagination. There’s a reason the striped hat lands on every regional and youth theater marquee in America.
3. “Opening Night”/“The King of Broadway” - The Producers (2001)
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks’ borscht belt-style comedy made The Producers the mega-hit that it was, and all that sharp-elbowed wit is introduced in this two-for-one pair of opening numbers. Before our title producer can introduce his own fall from grace, we meet the Broadway hack via the angry opening-night audiences at Funny Boy, his musical adaptation of Hamlet. By the time “The King of Broadway” commences with sounds of the shtetl on klezmer fiddle, we know exactly who we’re dealing with: “That slimy, sleazy Max Bialystock.”
4. “Not for the Life of Me”/“Thoroughly Modern Millie” - Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002)
Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan
Thoroughly Modern Millie offered a throwback to classic Broadway with a jazzy, dance-filled opening number fit for the Roaring Twenties. Our small-town leading lady, made iconic by breakout star Sutton Foster, hits the stage with a ribbon in her sweet, long hair, and ends the sequence as a fully flappered New Yorker, branded with her signature bob. Who doesn’t love a Kansas-girl-takes-the-big-city-by-storm story? Especially with Jeanine Tesori behind the melodies.
5. “Good Morning Baltimore” - Hairspray (2002)
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman
Tracy Turnblad “lying” in her vertical bed, greeting the day with a nasal “oh-oh-oh” is a core memory for every theatergoer who saw Marissa Jaret Winokur in her Tony-winning role. And the number only got more iconic from there. The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” drumbeat drops you right in the middle of the ‘60s; colorful flashers and drunks fill out the Baltimore streets; and Tracy’s love for it all, even the rats, lays the groundwork for the relentless optimism that makes her a hero. It’s a Shaiman and Wittman homerun.
6. “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English”/“It Sucks to Be Me” - Avenue Q (2003)
Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx
Puppets. They’re just like you and me. Especially in a Broadway audience with a demo that’s guaranteed to vibe with a song called “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English.” Young adult angst set in a foul-mouthed thread of the Sesame Street multiverse just hit the spot like nothing else back in 2003 (the Avenue Q-Wicked Tony showdown has become the stuff of legend). It’s a show that tells you what it is up front, so by the time Kate Monster drops her first F-bomb in “It Sucks to Be Me,” you’re know if you’re in or out.
7. “No One Mourns the Wicked” - Wicked (2003)
Stephen Schwartz
Jon M. Chu’s big-screen version renewed appreciation for this dynamic opening number, which functions more like a one-act play than a single song. It’s Elphaba’s full origin story as told after her death, so we know how it started and how it’s going. By the Ozians' final cry of “Wicked!” we’re so ready to find out what happened in between. At this point, we’ve also absorbed at least four different melodies and a glass-shattering high E. We’ll follow this yellow brick road anywhere.
8. "Statues and Stories" - The Light in the Piazza (2005)
Adam Guettel
Adam Guettel challenged Broadway audiences to accept a new sound with his complex, lyrical score for The Light in the Piazza. The opening number acclimates your ear and introduces you to Maragaret and Clara Johnson, the mother and daughter unassumingly strolling through a Florence piazza on their Italian vacation. Take a seat, belters. This one's for the sopranos.
9. “The Last Real Record Store on Earth” - High Fidelity (2006)
Tom Kitt and Amanda Green
This Broadway composing debut for Tom Kitt (and debut for lyricist Amanda Green) lasted only 32 performances at the Imperial Theatre, but its opening number sticks like Velcro. Grungy underachiever vibes are put to a pop-rock melody as Brooklyn record store owner Rob gives you a peek inside his uneventful life. As the tune goes: "Meet the real go-getter / With the thrift store sweater / And the last real record store on earth."
10. “Mama Who Bore Me” - Spring Awakening (2006)
Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater
The prayer of one girl inspecting her form in the mirror turns into a battle cry for an army of young women. Duncan Sheik’s harmonies, Steven Sater’s elegiac lyrics, Lea Michele’s adolescent rage. “Mama Who Bore Me” is a one-of-a-kind opening number that skips traditional exposition but tells you everything you need to know about this world and the people who inhabit it. It’s no mystery why Spring Awakening became an addiction for angsty teens all across the Broadway diaspora.
11. “Omigod You Guys” - Legally Blonde (2007)
Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin
Justice for Legally Blonde, one of the best female-driven musicals of the 21st century that has never gotten its due. Broadway.com vlogger Erika Henningsen proved there’s a showdown to be had between its Act One closer “So Much Better” and Wicked’s “Defying Gravity.” But shift your attention now to the musical’s opening number, which, kicked off by a killer drum fill, makes a meal of sorority sisterhood and emergency shopping. It also birthed the “Courtney, Take Your Break” internet phenomenon—plus, Delta Nus speak Bruiser? No edits.
12. “In the Heights” - In the Heights (2008)
Lin-Manuel Miranda
This nearly eight-minute number was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s introduction to Broadway and he brazenly opened it with the sound of claves and two straight minutes of rapping. It was a musical paradigm shift for Broadway, but it brought the universe of Usnavi’s Washington Heights bodega to life.
13. “Just Another Day” - Next to Normal (2009)
Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey
An unstable mother, a morose father, a high-strung daughter and a golden son. Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey knew they just needed an infectious rock beat to get people on board for this dark-hued story about the dysfunctional Goodman family. It’s an opener that realizes all the juicy rock potential in the quiet desperation of suburban America.
14. “Underground” - Memphis (2009)
David Bryan and Joe DiPietro
Memphis, set in the 1950s when segregation of musical tastes was still the norm, opens with a taste of what's going down "underground" at Delray's juke joint. It's a number whose sole purpose is to create a place you'd want to spend your own Saturday night, and between the rocking band and the dirty dancing, it succeeds.
15. “Hello!” - The Book of Mormon (2011)
Robert Lopez, Trey Parker and Matt Stone
The Book of Mormon bulldozed all sense of propriety when it came to satire fit for Broadway, and the show’s opening number—performed by an army of fledgling missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—was the Trojan Horse. It’s a bouncy march of clean-shaven boys that has absolutely no groove but is a permanent earworm. And it even manages to sneak in a harmonic homage to the Tabernacle Choir. It’s been nearly 15 years and doorbells have never sounded the same.
16. “Live in Living Color” - Catch Me If You Can (2011)
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman
In 2011, the tunesmiths behind Hairspray came back with another ‘60s-flavored bop to open the story of con man Frank Abagnale Jr. “I got a story that's fast and slick / And it's got more twists than a peppermint stick.” It’s a buckle-your-seatbelts kind of number with lyrics that were made for doing The Swim.
17. “To Build a Home” - The Bridges of Madison County (2014)
Jason Robert Brown
Kelli O’Hara unleashing her vocal bravura on the word “Iowa” is enough to make this opening number one of the best of the past 25 years. But there are plenty of reasons this too-short-lived romantic musical still managed to secure Jason Robert Brown a Tony for Best Score. Adding backstory where the original book and film don’t, Brown opens the show with war bride Francesca Johnson’s journey from Naples to Winterset, Iowa. It’s a lush musical monologue, starting with the feel of an Italian aria and dissolving into a sturdy oom-pah—the utilitarian cadence of life as an American farm wife.
18. “Welcome to the Renaissance” - Something Rotten! (2015)
Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick
Something Rotten!'s jaunty opener is in the dictionary next to the word "hummable." It's also a genuinely helpful primer on the cutting-edge arts, culture and science of 16th-century England where the Shakespeare spoof takes place. The number mostly plays with setting and tone, but we also get a grand introduction to the Bard himself—a man so talented, successful and beloved, you have to hate him.
19. “Alexander Hamilton” - Hamilton (2015)
Lin-Manuel Miranda
What can we say? Lin-Manuel Miranda is an expert at opening numbers. “Alexander Hamilton” sets the musical vocabulary for his ambitious hip-hop score, but in every other way, it fits the classic formula. We meet our hero and our villain, get all that clunky exposition out of the way and are sent off into the story with an anticipatory “just you wait.” It’s textbook, but executed to perfection.
20. “What’s Inside”/“Opening Up” - Waitress (2016)
Sara Bareilles
Elsewhere in the 2015-16 season, Broadway fell in love with pie maker Jenna Hunterson—and not because of her unflappable ethics. Sara Bareilles’ debut as a musical theater composer caught everyone’s ears, and the opening pair of songs encapsulate the show’s whole delectable ethos: delicate introspection buttressing music with heart, humor and a sprig of southern twang.
21. “Welcome to the Rock” - Come From Away (2017)
Irene Sankoff and David Hein
This song had Broadway chanting the syncopated rhythm of “I’m an islander, I am an islander” for all of 2017. Blending modern Broadway with the Celtic and folk music traditions of Newfoundland, Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s opening number got audiences hooked on a brand-new musical about the 38 planes that were grounded in Gander on 9/11. It’s a montage of friendly faces, overlapping narratives and a driving drumbeat that gets your pulse going.
22. “Road to Hell” - Hadestown (2019)
Anaïs Mitchell
Hermes spends the first five minutes of Hadestown telling us repeatedly that a “sad song” is ahead. And still, it feels like Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street. As opening numbers go, “Road to Hell” is as efficient as it is fun. One by one, we meet all our main players—gods, Fates, mortals. Meanwhile, a jazz trombone carries us off on a train to the Underworld, and we are more than willing passengers.
23. “The Whole ‘Being Dead’ Thing” - Beetlejuice (2019)
Eddie Perfect
"Welcome to a(nother) show about death." We dallied in the afterlife a lot in 2019, but Beetlejuice went all out with its carnival of the macabre, starting with this in-your-face opening number where Beetlejuice claims his role as our hellish sherpa. It's unapologetically brash, it's wickedly clever and it's coming back to Broadway this fall.
24. “Ex-Wives” - SIX (2021)
Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss
Before SIX became a hit on Broadway it was a hit on Spotify, and this opening banger introducing Henry VIII’s half dozen pop diva exes explains why. It has camp. It has screlting. It has a Little Shop of Horrors easter egg. The second the downbeat drops on the “Greensleeves” remix, you know what the show lacks in plot it’ll make up for in personality—and riffs.
25. “Tulsa ’67” - The Outsiders (2024)
Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance of Jamestown Revival
The opening pages of S.E. Hinton’s coming-of-age novel, narrated by the introspective Ponyboy Curtis, get a country-rock treatment in this opener for the 2024 Tony-winning Best Musical. It gives you time, place, story, character, mood and adolescent male camaraderie—all in under six minutes. It’s music that puts the heart in Heartland.