Jukebox musical aren’t the problem bad writing is

Yeah, a lot of jukebox musicals suck. I’m not gonna argue that. Plenty of them feel like lazy cash grabs with a half-baked plot just to string a bunch of hit songs together. But honestly? I don’t think jukebox musicals as a concept are bad at all. If anything, they have a ton of creative potential.

Taking pre-existing songs and reshaping them into a whole new story? That’s actually pretty cool when done well. It takes effort to reinterpret music, make it fit a narrative, and give it new emotional weight. The problem isn’t the format it’s just that a lot of them don’t put in the work.

But let’s be real plenty of original musicals suck too. Like, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark had original music, but that didn’t save it. Why? Because the story was a mess. A bad musical is a bad musical, no matter where the songs come from.

So yeah, the reputation jukebox musicals have is kinda deserved, but I don’t think it’s fair to write off the whole idea. When done right, they can actually be super creative.