You couldn't have picked a topic closer to my heart...
"Stop, Time" from Big moves the hell out of me every time I hear it. There are other fine numbers from this show, such as Dancing All the Time and I Want To Go Home, but I can still feel the excitement I felt when first hearing Liz Callaway's recording.
Liz Callaway also recorded "Sailing" from A New Brain, which, I think, is an obvious choice. Sometimes it seems like the love song of our age, and yet it contains surprisingly un-sentimental lines like "Sex is good, but I'd rather go sailing."
"I Won't Mind" from The Other Franklin - not sure if this counts, because, as far as I know, The Other Franklin was never completed and or produced. But this is an amazing song that captures the feelings of many a childless uncle or aunt.
"Our Children" from Ragtime. I think when future generations look back on this era, they're going to say we were very lucky to have Flaherty & Ahrens.
"Why" from Tick Tick Boom. Now, as this song was premiered posthumously, I can't be sure it was written in the past ten years, but it didn't see the light of day. I think the best score heard on Broadway in ages was A Class Act, but, similarly, the songwriter was long dead when it premiered.
"I Have Found" from The Royal Family. This is a musical that hasn't been produced yet. So maybe it only counts for the next decade. But when you heard it in the 2002 cabaret act Finding Joy, you knew you were hearing a classic.
"A Breeze on the River" from The Full Monty is yet another depiction of feelings about a child, which seems to be a running theme of this list.
"Lay Down Your Head" from Violet is a lullaby, too.
And "A Place Called Home" from A Christmas Carol is certainly in the same mode.
"Ahead of My Time" may or may not be the name of the Peter Mills song about the gay caveman, and it may or may not have been in his Taxi Cabaret, but I think it's probably the funniest song I've heard in the past ten years.
Of course, I laughed at every song in From the Hip, the musical about the performing siamese twins. I laughed at every song in that OTHER musical about the performing siamese twins, but the authors didn't intend me to.
Now I've listed ten, so I feel I've taken up too much space to mention "My New Philosophy" "Seasons of Love" "Notice Me Horton" "Forget About the Boy" "Along Came Bialy" "Way Back To Paradise" "What Is It About Her?" "Dancing" (from 3hree), "Still" and "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"
