General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20268 min read

List of rock musicals

A rock musical is a musical theater work whose score uses the sounds and techniques of rock music rather than primarily traditional Broadway styles; the term also extends to jukebox shows built from preexisting rock and pop songs. Writers on the genre have noted that, despite decades of use, no scholarly or even semi-formal definition of the "rock musical" ever appeared in print, and the label is applied loosely to works ranging from fully rock-scored shows to musicals with only sparing rock elements.¹^•² Hair (1967), Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Godspell (1971), The Wiz (1975), and Rent (1996) are generally considered rock musicals.³

Key fact	Detail
Definition	A musical whose score uses the sounds and techniques of contemporary popular and/or rock music rather than primarily traditional Broadway styles⁴
Typical features	Drums, electric guitars, bass and keyboards, strong backbeats, repeated chord patterns, riffs, pop song structures, belt and mix vocals, speech-like phrasing, and amplification⁴
First Broadway rock	Rock 'n' roll appears for the first time in a Broadway musical in Bye Bye Birdie; Hair opened Off Broadway at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre⁵
Peak decades	The 1960s and 1970s, with Hair (1967), Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Grease (1972), and The Wiz (1975)⁶
Reference history	Elizabeth L. Wollman, The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig (University of Michigan Press, 2006)⁷
Longest-lived title	Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show, performed worldwide for over 50 years in more than 30 countries⁸
2015 turning point	School of Rock and Hamilton opened the same year; hip-hop challenging rock's hegemony became a sociological as well as musical shift⁹

What counts as a rock musical

The musicologist Scott Warfield divides the "rock musical" into three sub-categories: works identified as rock musicals by their creators and producers, works that began as concept albums, and musicals that emulate styles that preceded rock. Hair belongs to the first category; Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita began as rock opera concept albums; and shows drawing mainly on blues and gospel sit more loosely in the third.¹⁰ A separate distinction separates rock musicals from jukebox musicals: by definition, concept albums like Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy, and Evita cannot be jukebox musicals, because a jukebox score is never newly composed but compiled from preexisting, well-known popular songs that were never intended for theatrical use.¹¹ Practitioners also distinguish what the score's own creative team calls "rock" from shows whose scores merely contain rock signifiers in part.²

Origins and the first wave (1960s and 1970s)

Virtually every history of the musical remarks, positively or negatively, on the first appearances of rock-influenced music on Broadway in the mid-1960s.¹ Rock 'n' roll first appears in a musical in Bye Bye Birdie.⁵ The rock musical "happening" Hair (1968 on Broadway) was hailed as a landmark, but it ushered in a period of confusion in the musical theater; as popular tastes shifted, Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince refocused the genre on concept musicals, and rock musicals quickly faded into the background in the early 1970s.¹²

The 1970s nevertheless produced a substantial list: Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Godspell (1971), Pippin (1972), Grease (1972), The Rocky Horror Show (1973), and The Wiz (1975).⁶ Other rock musicals and rock operas of the period include Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1971), Evita (1978), and A Chorus Line (1975), though the last is more often classed as a concept musical.¹³^•⁶ The form also traveled: a French rock opera, La Révolution française, was staged at the Palais des Sports in Paris in 1973, and Luc Plamondon and Michel Berger's Starmania (1979) marked a change in France's musical landscape.¹⁴ In Israel, the early 1970s rock musicals Hair, Bald Head, and Jump preceded, anticipated, and likely enabled rock music on the country's big stages and national broadcasting.¹⁰

Concept albums and rock operas

Several titles in the list originated as studio albums rather than stage shows. Jesus Christ Superstar is subtitled "a rock opera" and began as a concept album before reaching Broadway in 1971; Evita likewise began as a rock opera concept album and transferred to Broadway in 1979, starring Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin.²^•¹⁵ The Who's Tommy belongs to the same lineage of rock opera, and American Idiot, Green Day's concept album brought to Broadway in 2010, renewed the model with punk material.⁷^•¹⁶

Revival and the 1990s to 2010s

Following the popularity of the 1960s and 1970s shows, rock musicals saw a revival of sorts in the 1990s.¹⁷ The defining work of the period was Jonathan Larson's Rent (1996), a Tony winner that Time describes as an exceptional case in Broadway's uneasy embrace of rock.¹⁶ Later original-score examples include Spring Awakening (rock-driven score by Duncan Sheik), Next to Normal (soft-rock score by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey), and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.¹⁶^•¹⁸

Rock artists themselves began supplying Broadway scores: Bono and The Edge of U2 for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011), Sting for The Last Ship, David Byrne for Here Lies Love, Billie Joe Armstrong for American Idiot, and David Bowie for the off-Broadway Lazarus (2015), built around songs old and new and revisiting his character Thomas Newton from The Man Who Fell to Earth.¹⁶ Andrew Lloyd Webber returned to his rock-and-roll roots with School of Rock (2015), the first of his musicals staged on Broadway to go into profit since The Phantom of the Opera.¹⁶^•¹⁹

Jukebox rock musicals

A large share of the current list consists of jukebox musicals, shows whose scores consist of existing well-known pop songs instead of original music.¹¹ Sub-types include the biographical musical (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, 2014, drawing on a single performer's songbook; Tina), the fictional catalog show (Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You, Rock of Ages, 2009, which draws from multiple sources), and tribute revues.¹¹^•²⁰ Time noted that with occasional exceptions such as Rent, Broadway's embrace of rock in the jukebox era was largely an exercise in nostalgia, recycling oldies in shows like Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys, and Beautiful.¹⁶

Scholars debate two principal issues about these shows: whether the jukebox musical is creative enough to repurpose rock's cultural patrimony for an enriching night in the theater, and how its curation practices reproduce or challenge the gendered and racial politics of rock's "Golden Age," which have come under increasing interrogation in a post-#MeToo and Black Lives Matter landscape.⁹

Current and recent titles

Six by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss brings the six wives of Henry VIII to pop-rock life in a part-biography, part-girl-band concert format that has played Broadway and tours the United States.²¹ In 2026, Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show came back to Broadway at Studio 54; during the week that ended June 28, the revival grossed $1,215,225, setting a house record and topping every other production ever staged at the venue, and it earned nine Tony nominations for 2026, among them Best Revival of a Musical.²² A new rock musical, Galileo, with Raúl Esparza in the title role, a book by Emmy winner Danny Strong, and music and lyrics by Michael Weiner and Zoe Sarnak, has been announced for Broadway.²³ Outside the anglophone world, Paris's musical theater boom has leaned heavily on the rock-opera tradition: attendance at musicals there rose 22 percent in 2024, fueled in particular by the 1.3 million people who attended Starmania.²⁴

Representative list by category

Creator-identified rock musicals: Hair (1967), Jump, Bald Head¹⁰
Rock operas and concept albums: Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Tommy, Evita (1978), American Idiot (2010)¹¹^•¹⁶
Original-score rock musicals: Godspell (1971), Grease (1972), The Wiz (1975), Rent (1996), Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, School of Rock (2015)³^•¹⁶
Jukebox rock musicals: Mamma Mia! (1999), Rock of Ages (2009), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (2014), We Will Rock You, Jagged Little Pill, Tina¹¹^•²⁰
Rock-artist scores: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (Bono and The Edge, 2011), The Last Ship (Sting), Here Lies Love (David Byrne), Lazarus (David Bowie)¹⁶
Notable flops: The Capeman⁷

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026