You’ve seen Newsies. You’ve heard Bonnie and Clyde. You’ve scoured the internet for his disney medleys, his vine compilations, Smash and Flash and Supergirl. But there’s one thing, one wonderful thing, you have not yet seen.
Allow me to present the 2015 Death Note Musical Concept Album.
Ohhh my god folks, you have to hear him on here. Jeremy Jordan as a justice-obsessed, ruthless, genius serial killer is not something you can pass up.
For those of you who haven’t encountered it before, this is a musical adaptation of Death Note, a manga-turned-anime-turned-musical-now-I-guess. Death Note is the story of a boy genius named Light (played on the album by Jeremy Jordan) who acquires a notebook that can cause the death of anyone whose name is written in it. Most of the series (and the entirety of the musical) focuses on the cat-and-mouse game between Light and the famous detective L as they search for each other’s identities, L to bring a mass murderer to justice and Light to bring down the obstacle to purging the world of all criminals.
The album has its ups and downs, and the plot may be tough to follow just from the soundtrack, especially for the DN-uninitiated. (I suffered through the stage recording of the Japanese production, so I knew what was up, but y’all might have it rough, especially since they changed plot elements even from the original DN.) But holy crap, I can’t believe that Jeremy Jordan stans aren’t all over this shit. There’s kind of a lot of Really Good voice moments for him on this album, and just a significant amount of him singing period. It also features Laura Osnes, who played Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde, for a whole song. So that’s a bonus.
His Wikipedia article makes no mention of this album. If I have time soon, I will rectify this fact. The world needs know know of this treasure.
TL;DR: If you like Jeremy Jordan at all, listen to the Death Note Musical.