"On Lexington & 52nd Street" (also "Lexington & 52nd Street") is an original song introduced in the seventh episode of the first season of the musical TV series Smash, entitled " The Workshop". The song is written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, ^[1] but in the show's universe, it is written by the songwriting team of Tom Levitt ( Christian Borle) and Julia Houston ( Debra Messing) for their Marilyn Monroe musical Bombshell.

In "The Workshop", Michael Swift ( Will Chase), playing Joe DiMaggio, performs the song as DiMaggio breaks up with his wife Monroe, while Michael is simultaneously breaking up with Julia.

The song was originally released as a single from iTunes and Amazon.com's MP3 story and is currently a track on the cast album Bombshell.

Critical reception

Series Regular describes the song as a "surprise" and notes "There is a passion and anger behind the music that was quite unexpected and refreshing to listen to. It is a major contrast to the other songs in the musical, and the performance of Will Chase is actually quite stellar." ^[2] Broadwayworld.com describes the song as "striking and wholly stylistically unique", and "Will Chase’s best (and, apparently, last) showcase." It continues by saying "film noir with a pulsating, almost atonal, steely and terse tinge, this is the sort of character number that seamlessly presents plot development and character exposition simultaneously in a purely, thrillingly theatrical manner and the type of dramatic and musical merging of storytelling SMASH excels at above absolutely everything else, time after time after time after time." ^[3]

Release History

References