West Side Story West Side Story West Side Story is a musical with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid 1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood (in the early 1960s, much of the neighborhood was cleared in an urban renewal project for Lincoln Center, which changed the neighborhood's character). The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The members of
America (West Side Story song) using the film version of the song, while a high school would normally use the stage version. In 2003, the song was used in advertisements for Admiral Insurance though with different lyrics. In 1994, the song was also the unofficial anthem at the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the United States and was sung by the 3 Tenors (Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti) at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles to an estimated global TV audience of 1.3 billion viewers. America (West Side Story song) “America” is a song from the musical "West Side Story". Stephen Sondheim wrote the