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A rock musical is a musical theatre work with rock music. The genre of rock musical may overlap somewhat with concept albums and song cycles, as they sometimes tell a story through the rock music, and some concept albums become rock musicals. Notable examples of rock musicals include Hair, Grease and Rent. The Who's Tommy and other so-called rock operas are sometimes presented on stage as a musical.

The rock musical became an important part of the musical theatre scene in the late 1960s with the hit show Hair. Styled "The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical," the anti-war free-love hippie-themed, nude-scened Hair premiered in 1967 as the first production staged at the Public Theatre. It moved to Broadway in October 1968.^[1] Your Own Thing also opened in 1968 and featured a gender-switching version of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. However, the first musical to hint at what was to come had been the final edition of the Ziegfeld Follies in 1957. ^[2] This production featured one rock and roll number, "The Juvenile Delinquent." The song was performed by fifty year-old Billy DeWolfe. This was followed by another precursor to the rock musical, Bye Bye Birdie (1960)."^[3] Although rock and roll would have to wait for seven more years before returning to Broadway, these early, tentative infusions of rock into musical theatre paved the way for Hair and its progeny.^[4]

Jesus Christ Superstar, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, began as a concept album in 1970 and is sometimes categorized as a Rock Opera. The money made from album sales was used to fund the subsequent stage production in late 1971.^[5] The musical Godspell (1971), had similar religious themes (albeit with a less controversial treatment) and pop/rock influences.

The genre continued to develop and gain popularity through the 1970s with shows such as Grease and Pippin. Some rock musicals have no dialogue or are otherwise reminiscent of opera, with dramatic, emotional themes, and may be styled "rock operas". In addition, the rock musical moved in other directions with shows like The Wiz, Raisin, Dreamgirls and Purlie, which were heavily influenced by R&B and soul music, and with the jukebox musicals, such as Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys, that feature the songs of a particular band or performer.

The rock musical saw a decline in popularity through the 1980s. Except for a few outposts of rock, like Little Shop of Horrors (1982) and Chess (1986), audience tastes turned to shows with European pop scores, like Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera, as well as to more nostalgic fare. However, the rock musical achieved a renaissance in the 1990s, due in no small part to the popularity of Jonathan Larson's Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical Rent (1996). This was followed by Off-Broadway rock musicals like Bat Boy: The Musical (1997) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998), John Cameron Mitchell's Off-Broadway show about a transgendered rocker.^[6]

The rock musical has seen a resurgence in the late 1990s and the 2000s, with shows by composers like Elton John (Aida, 1998; 2000 and Lestat, 2006), and Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, 2003), as well as a number of successful jukebox musicals with rock scores. The most recent original rock musical production is Duncan Sheik's 2007 Tony Award winner, Spring Awakening.

• List of rock musicals
• Rock opera

• Original rock musicals and/or operas on the Internet