What Your Favorite Musical Says About You

You are a little too classic for your own good. You probably like vanilla ice cream, roller coasters that don't go very high, and boys that call you back at a reasonable hour.

By Chelsea Fagan

Updated 7 months ago, May 7, 2024

Few things say as much about us as the musicals we have devoted way too much of our fangirl/boy free time to. Whether it’s a serious(ish) melodrama or an over-the-top farce, your favorite musical is the best part part of who you are as a human being.

Wicked

You are all about the underdog, the villain, learning the story behind the most misunderstood characters of our youth. Never the pretty, popular one yourself, you have a tendency to side with the misfits who are easily thrown under the bus when times get tough. Aside from your vaguely sexual and certainly crippling attraction to Idina Menzel (something we all have, regardless of orientation), you are all about a new take on an old story, especially if it includes a song as good as “Defying Gravity.”

Les Miserables

Sometimes you just like to sit in your room and cry and think about how difficult life was for people in early-19th century France, okay??? You are not here to be judged — you like things that are sad… like, egregiously sad, sad to the point of scarcely making sense anymore. You have yet to meet a character you wouldn’t want to go through an absurd amount of trials and tribulations before reaching a semi-happy ending which actually isn’t that happy if you think about it for two minutes beyond the end of the song. There is just something refreshing in all of the somberness, especially when coupled with rousing, revolutionary marches. Also, you are secretly Eponine. #WeAreAllEponine

Grease

You are a little too classic for your own good. You probably like vanilla ice cream, roller coasters that don’t go very high, and boys that call you back at a reasonable hour. But then, of course, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. You don’t need to have some flashy new musical be your favorite and be that Special Snowflake who is on the cutting edge. (Also, if Grease 2 is legitimately your favorite musical ever, you are now my new best friend. Only the realest and most perfect humans can successfully love that masterpiece in the face of the tidal waves of hot, salty Haterade which crash down upon it.)

West Side Story

You are all about the idea of gangsters existing in some charming version of New York in which fighting is replaced by highly choreographed dancing. You would be totally down to join some kind of a gang if it involved pirouettes and coordinated snapping. You’d even love to get stabbed by a rhinestone-studded pocketknife and bleed sparkling blood. Adorable!

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers

Just kidding, no one likes this musical. If you disagree, you are lying. It is physically impossible to enjoy.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Anything campy and kitsch is your favorite thing. You love getting dressed up and getting into things — being a part of the show — and it wouldn’t surprise me if you were the kind of person who sings along during songs so loudly that others can’t hear the actual singer. After all, this excuse to dress up insane, ripped up, semi-gothic hooker garb is as good as any other, amirite? You also enjoy constantly addressing your gender-bending love for Frank-N-Furter, which is KA-RAZY because you are a STR8 GURL and he is KROSS-DRESSING omggggggggg.

Avenue Q

Let’s be honest, this whole musical is just a little to #real when it comes to live in general. You’re either Kate, undesirable and perpetually messing up with her various crushes, or you’re straight out of college with a BA in something useless about to get hilariously exploited by the insane real estate/job market. Or you’re a terrible combination of both. In any case, you relate to this because it is one of the few musicals that doesn’t make people in their 20s and 30s look like some unrealistic magical creatures who have fabulous apartments with their imaginary money. Even if they’re foam puppets, the characters of the Q just get you.

RENT

There is just something so incredibly beautiful to you about the combination of uplifting rock-n-roll numbers and horrible, fatal disease. For some odd reason, few things make you wax as romantically about New York as seeing some of its most dark, unfortunate corners — especially when accented by unforgivable 90s clothes. There is at least one character who gets you entirely/makes you wish that you were a tragic bohemian living in the West Village and/or stripping, and there is at least one song which, in only the first few notes, will systematically make you cry like an enormous, ugly baby.

Mamma Mia

You either really love ABBA or you really love Meryl Streep. There is no way Amanda Seyfried won you over on this one.

The Phantom of the Opera

There is no level of cheeseball which is too cheeseball for you. There is RENT cheeseball, which is not quite enough. Then there is Les Miserables cheeseball, which is getting closer but still not quite enough cloying period costumes and ridiculous operatics. But then there is Phantom of the Opera cheeseball, which is the only level of soap opera-level absurd to quench your undeniable thirst for over-the-top sopranos and completely unbelievable love stories. You need Phantom, because there is nothing else quite like it.

Cats

You understand the purpose of Cats and genuinely enjoy it. That is the only criteria. That, in and of itself, is an extreme accomplishment.

Chicago

There is just something extremely sexy to you about jazz, prohibition, gangsters, and the general look of a sequined flapper dress. You have likely sung/performed “The Cell Block Tango” for your friends enough that they have learned to hate the words “pop” and “squish” in their daily lives. You also have never found a moment in life that didn’t call for a little bit of jazz hands, and are proud of having a movie adaptation that is among the better ones in the musical theater world. (I’m looking at you, Phantom)

Hairspray

There is at least part of you which totally identifies with Tracy Turnblad. And even if you think that the musical will never quite live up to the subversive genius of the John Waters film, your love for the musical lives almost independently of the original material. You realize that almost every song on the soundtrack could have just been a legitimate song on the radio in the early 60s, and the style of wearing your hair several feet above the end of your forehead is something that should have never gone out of style. Also, you would totally bang Zac Efron wearing an argyle sweater vest.