Blues Brothers and Hedwig Comparison of Music: Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Blues Brothers

Hedwig and the Angry Inch was designed in part, according to Billboard (Paoletta, 2001), to help rock fans overcome a certain kind of paranoia of attending a "movie musical." "Hedwig is a serious rock musical blending glamour and punk in a style reminiscent of David Bowie," Paoletta writes. Serious? That's up for debate. But the score, by Stephen Trask, goes the route from country, to sassy David Bowie imitations, to grunge, to punk, and back to country. The film is taken from an off-Broadway show, a show which gave birth to a CD in 1999. This album from the film version is riotously louder, featuring songs like "Sugar Daddy," "The Origin of Love," among others.

To compare the Hedwig CD to the Blues Brothers soundtrack would be like comparing the screech of tires from a car going a hundred miles per hour on hot asphalt in...

The terrific R&B tunes from the Blues Brothers, the soul and blues numbers, offer a rich sense of Americana in the fifties and sixties, while Hedwig is the nightmare that came to visit when bible-belt mom and dad find out junior is gay.
The music aside, Hedwig is not a musical so much as it is a pilgrimage into gender confusion, vulgarity, and a plethora of piercing sounds and pierced faces. Wildly erotic, yes, and emotionally tear-jerking on occasion, the "world tour" that takes Hedwig and her troupe to myriad venues, shocks with lines like "my penis used to be where my vagina never was." And, "My first day as a woman and it's already that time of month."

This is sexual theater, with music, where one must have an open mind or already be part of the scene. Millions of youthful fans loved it, and bought…