I understood what this meant when I heard Jennifer Holiday sing And I Am Telling You in Dreamgirls. People on their feet, cheering and applauding (Jennifer Hudson does a bang up job too, but Holiday broke my showstopper cherry). Good thing it comes at the end of an act because I can see how it could very literally stop the show from proceeding.
It’s a grand song-- big and emotional but I think it’s Holiday’s delivery that raises the goosebumps.
Now I’m looking for more of them. Showstoppers, that is. What are some of the more famous ones?
P.S. I’ve seen exactly two Broadway shows in my whole entire life, so nothing is obvious to me.
“Defying Gravity” is Wicked’s act 1 ender and it’s a great song, culminating with Elphaba (the Witch) flying in the air. Great singing by Idina Menzel.
Man. I have never seen this show, but someone recently gave me a CD with some music they’d like to do, and this was on it. I think I must have listened to this song 30 times that day. Just superb.
(Not all of these ended acts, but they are showstoppers).
“Brush Up Your Shakespeare” and “Always True to You, Darling, in My Fashion” from **Kiss Me Kate. ** Both songs had verses added in previews because the audience wanted more.
“Seven and a Half Cents” from The Pajama Game
“Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” in Guys and Dolls.
“One” from A Chorus Line
“One Day More” and “Master of the House” from Les Miserables
“Show Off,” “Toledo Surprise,” and “I Do I Do in the Sky” from The Drowsy Chaperone.
“Cell Block Tango” and “All That Jazz” from Chicago.
“Anything Goes” from Anything Goes.
“Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” from Annie Get Your Gun
Well, I’m a huge Elton John fan so I do like the song. However, the visuals in that first ten minutes of the show are just, in my opinion, what makes it so incredible.
You’re not kidding. Be sure to check out Linda Eder’s version, on her “Broadway My Way” album as well.
I read somewhere that the *original *showstopper - the performance in honor of which they coined the term - was a very young Ethel Merman singing “I Got Rhythm” in Girl Crazy on Broadway in 1930. There was so much applause they literally had to stop the show.
Gypsy Rose Lee’s autobiography Gypsy tells of her youthful vaudeville career in the early 1920s and mentions how her little sister June would “stop the show cold.” Though the book has been accused of embroidery, it does show an earlier use.