Sings the Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber American Songbook, but unlike Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and many other artists, she had never recorded a complete album of songs by one composer. The songs on the album are all taken from the popular musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, that he wrote with various lyricists. The oldest song found on the album is from the 1971 musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" which originally opened on Broadway in October of that year. Bringing it up to date the album also includes two songs from "Sunset Boulevard" which had recently premiered on July 12, 1993 in London's West End. Four songs had
Sunset Boulevard (musical) film remake starring Angela Lansbury as a fading musical comedian rather than a silent film star, Sondheim declined, citing his conversation with Wilder. When Lloyd Webber saw the film in the early 1970s, he was inspired to write what he pictured as the title song for a theatrical adaptation, fragments of which he instead incorporated into "Gumshoe". In 1976, after a conversation with Hal Prince, who had the theatrical rights to "Sunset", Lloyd Webber wrote "an idea for the moment when Norma Desmond returns to Paramount Studios"; Lloyd Webber did no further work on the play until after 1989's "Aspects