You know when something’s somehow better than you expected?
The Broadway for Orlando charity single is exactly what they promised it would be –Broadway’s brightest and most legendary voices coming together to cover What the World Needs Now is Love. 100% of the sales go to the LGBT Centre of Florida. You can buy it on iTunes.
Given this task, I might have chosen a different song. Seasons of Love is the obvious choice. Or Home from Beauty and the Beast. Maybe I Will Always Love You. Something less light.
But I would have been wrong.
Any singalong feels like coming together with all the people singing it, even if only in your car. What the World Needs Now feels like a celebration, the love and joy of everyone singing multiplying the love of everyone listening, and suddenly we’re back at love is love is love is love.
Star-wise, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Audra McDonald and Idina Menzel and Sean Hayes are givens, but Kristen Bell and Whoopi Goldberg and Kimiko Glenn and Wayne Brady might be surprises. Sarah Jessica Parker and Nathan Lane and Rosie O’Donnell are there too. Hell, Rosie Perez is here. It’s not a party, exactly—more like a backyard family reunion if everyone in your family could sing like hell (*cough* almost).
See if you can blind-guess which of your favourites sing which lines. Or, if you’re feeling a little mischievousness and snarky mixed in with your charitable donation and support for your LGBT friends and family, you can amuse yourself imagining the audio producers putting this together. Guess when they said ‘Oh man, we gotta put something under that person’ and when they were relieved to be able to let it ride unencumbered.
Some of the choir members will be singing it tonight on Maya and Marty on NBC. Accompanied, one assumes, by Maya and Marty. At least, I fervently hope.