Rent [Original Broadway Cast]

Disc 1
1	Tune up #1 0:50
2	Voice Mail #1 0:36
3	Tune up #2 1:32
4	Rent 4:25
5	You Okay Honey? 1:41
6	Tune up #3 0:24
7	One Song Glory 2:43
8	Light My Candle 4:05
9	Voice Mail #2 0:46
10	Today 4 U 3:30
11	You'll See 2:57
12	Tango: Maureen 3:28
13	Life Support 1:58
14	Out Tonight 3:48
15	Another Day 4:44
16	Will I? 2:29
17	On the Street 1:32
18	Santa Fe 3:12
19	I'll Cover You 2:28
20	We're Okay 1:22
21	Christmas Bells 6:04
22	Over the Moon 5:16
23	La Vie Boheme 8:00
24	I Should Tell You 3:00
25	La Vie Boheme B 1:53
Disc 2
1	Seasons of Love 2:51
2	Happy New Year / Adam Pascal 3:24
3	Voice Mail #3 / Aiko Nakasone 0:50
4	Happy New Year B / Adam Pascal 3:56
5	Take Me or Leave Me / Idina Menzel 3:43
6	Seasons of Love B 1:06
7	Without You / Adam Pascal 4:21
8	Voice Mail #4 / Aiko Nakasone 0:32
9	Contact / Jesse L. Martin 2:07
10	I'll Cover You (Reprise) / Jesse L. Martin 2:50
11	Halloween / Anthony Rapp 1:48
12	Goodbye Love / Adam Pascal 5:57
13	What You Own / Adam Pascal 3:56
14	Voice Mail #5 / Aiko Nakasone 0:57
15	Finale / Adam Pascal 5:30
16	Your Eyes / Adam Pascal 2:20
17	Finale B / Adam Pascal 2:59
18	Seasons of Love / Cast 4:26

Barnes & Noble

Sprawling and impassioned, messy and often overreaching, Rent remains the most significant Broadway musical of the late '90s. Using characters derived from Puccini's opera "La Bohème," composer Jonathan Larson weaves an arresting tale of a year in the life of a motley group of disenfranchised East Villagers coping with adult responsibility, poverty, AIDS, drug addiction, and other malevolent forces that continually surround them. This 1996 double disc, produced by veteran hitmaker Arif Mardin, features the marvelous original cast, including Anthony Rapp, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Adam Pascal, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, and Idina Menzel. Rent contains an abundance of heartfelt, gorgeous songs, particularly "I'll Cover You," "Sante Fe," "Light My Candle," "Over the Moon," the searing "One Song Glory," and Rubin-Vega's fabulous "Out Tonight," as well as the show's theme of warmth and wonder, "Seasons of Love," also included as a bonus track performed by Stevie Wonder. David Elliot Cohen

All Music Guide

Songwriter/librettist Jonathan Larson's musical Rent caused a considerable stir in the spring of 1996 -- a stir that included multiple Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and an open-ended run on Broadway -- because it succeeded in synthesizing a range of popular music styles while telling a story full of contemporary concerns including AIDS, drug abuse, homosexuality, and gentrification in witty, moving language. At the same time, it boasted traditional roots in the sense that it was based (very loosely) on the same source as Puccini's hundred-year-old opera La Bohème, Henri Murger's Scenes de la Vie de Bohème. In Larson's retelling, the story concerned a group of young people on the Lower East Side of Manhattan near the end of the 20th century, trying to make it as rock musicians, filmmakers, and performance artists while avoiding being evicted from the apartments in which they were squatting without paying rent (and while also not selling out). Larson, born in 1960, clearly had ingested the whole of post-Beatles pop/rock music along with an array of other musical styles including everything from traditional pop to hip-hop, and he mixed things up freely while holding the score together with some soaring melodies. The scourge of AIDS, and thus death among the young, hung over the show, which made Larson's own death (from an undetected aneurysm) on the night of the show's final dress rehearsal all the more poignant. For audiences, the carpe diem theme expressed in choruses like "no day but today" was inescapably linked to the tragic backstage story. But Rent still would have been a massive hit if Larson had lived; the only difference would have been that he might have had the opportunity to write more shows.

DreamWorks eschewed the usual Broadway practice of hauling the cast into a recording studio on the Sunday after the opening to record a cast album quickly. Instead, the label hired veteran producer Arif Mardin and prepared a thorough two-CD set that brought out the best in the score. Principals Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Idina Menzel all got the chance to immortalize their performances and made the most of it, and the extra length allowed for a full sense of the show's sweep on-stage. It was a sensible approach given that much of Rent was sung, right down to the answering machine messages, and that the songs were interwoven into suites, with musical themes returning frequently. The cast album did not appear until four months after the show opened on Broadway, but when it did, it proved worth the wait. (Concluding the album by having Stevie Wonder sing a version of the show's best-known song, "Seasons of Love," was not a wise decision, however.) William Ruhlmann