Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton soundtrack is showing its longevity…
The original Broadway cast recording of the 40-year-old Puerto Rican composer/lyricist, actor & playwright’s Hamilton: An American Musical has logged its 29th non-consecutive week in the top 10 on the Billboard 200—the longest cumulative run by any cast recording since the Broadway cast album to Hello, Dolly! was a fixture in the top 10 for 35 consecutive weeks from March 4, 1964 to October 31, 1964.
Hamilton surpasses the cast album to Hair, which logged 28 consecutive weeks in the top 10 in 1969.
Hello, Dolly! and Hamilton were the biggest Broadway blockbusters of the decades in which they first appeared.
Hello, Dolly! opened on January 16, 1964 and ran for 2,844 performances. It was, for a time, the longest-running Broadway musical in history.
Hamilton opened on August 6, 2015 and had run 1,919 performances as of March 11, 2020 when Broadway shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hello, Dolly! won 10 Tony Awards, including best musical. Hamilton took home 11, also including best musical.
The Hello, Dolly! cast album topped the Billboard 200 in June 1964, on the first chart following that year’s Tony Awards (which were held on May 24 that year). The album’s rise to No. 1 ended a 16-week lock on the top spot by The Beatles.
Hamilton has had a series of peaks, but has yet to top the chart.
It debuted at No. 12 in October 2015, reached a new peak of No. 11 in May 2016 amid the buzz over its record-setting 16 Tony nominations, another new peak of No. 3 in June 2016 following the Tony Awards, and yet another new peak of No. 2 last month after Disney+ premiered the filmed version of the Broadway show.
None of the songs from Hamilton have become chart hits in the traditional sense, though several are well-known, including “My Shot,” “Room Where It Happens,” “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story” and “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down),” which includes the crowd-igniting line “immigrants (we get the job done).”
Hamilton won a Grammy for best musical theater album. Hello, Dolly!, surprisingly, did not. It lost to the Funny Girl cast album.
If Hamilton logs six more weeks in the top 10, it will tie Dolly! for the longest run in the top 10 by a cast album since August 1963, when Billboard combined separate stereo and mono charts into one comprehensive chart.
Before that, when there were multiple album charts, several cast albums had even longer runs in the top 10. Here are three of the most prominent examples. My Fair Lady had 173 weeks in the top 10. The Sound of Music had 105. The Music Man had 66.