Dreamgirls

The first song the Dreamettes sing, at the Detroit amateur contest. The film’s opening scene uses it to show the group as it originally was.

• Harmony in which three parts interlock tightly recalls the girl-group sound of the early 1960s. Before anyone has been chosen as the star, the three sound like a single body.
• Listen to Effie’s big voice leaping out in front of that harmony. The music tells us first that the group’s center was, at the start, Effie.
• It is a short song of just over 2 minutes. Its length, ending as if chased off the stage, holds the hurried air of an amateur contest.
• In the original stage show, too, this was the song of the contest scene that raises the curtain. The film placed it as track 1 on the album, making it the story’s point of departure.

The passage where Curtis manufactures a hit through payola. The label’s first step over the line is portrayed as the most exhilarating ensemble.

• The voices of Curtis, C.C., Jimmy and the three women build up in a back-and-forth in which one sings and the many answer (call and response). It is the album’s signature ensemble, with seven voices woven together.
• The lyrics cheerfully sing of stepping over to the bad side. Yet the scene is one where kickbacks are actually changing hands. The joy of the song and the darkness of the scene are deliberately set at odds.
• As the song goes on, the scoring seems to grow and the rhythm to quicken. The music, in effect, keeps pace with the record climbing the charts.
• The Broadway veteran Hinton Battle sings along. In the original, this was a big Act 1 number showcasing Michael Bennett’s choreography.

The song that becomes the group’s new face after the lead vocal passes to Deena. It is a song of success, and a song of Effie being pushed to the back.

• Unlike the raw rhythm and blues so far, the strings glitter and the rhythm is sleek. You can hear that the sound has turned to crossover pop aimed at white audiences too.
• Deena’s clear, light voice steps forward, and Effie recedes into the harmony. Who sings from which position is itself the map of power.
• This song shares its title with the work itself. It returns as the finale in the last scene, so it pays to remember the melody well on first hearing.
• The song’s stage scene was dressed in costumes and lighting that recall the Supremes’ 1960s television appearances. The theater lighting designers Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer handled the film’s stage lighting.

The song Effie unleashes when she is left alone after the quarrel; the first half of the film closes here. It became the emblem of the entire work.

• It flows on without a break from the quarrel of the preceding “It’s All Over.” At first it is less a song than something close to sobbing speech. Listen for the point where the boundary between dialogue and song collapses.
• As the song goes on, the accompaniment thickens and the voice surges into a technique that drives the chest voice up into the high notes (belting). The idiom of gospel, a plea to God in church, is carried over into a plea addressed to one man.
• In the 1981 original, Jennifer Holliday sang this song and won the Tony Award for Best Actress. Holliday’s recording reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1982 and won a Grammy.
• In the film Jennifer Hudson sang it and, in a debut role, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. For the song’s music video, the scene from the film was used as is, rather than separately shot footage.

A song Jimmy records with a message for the times, only for Curtis to reject it. It is one of four songs written new for the film.

• The lyrics are by Willie Reale. It is the first time Jimmy, once a flamboyant showman, speaks calmly to the world, and the song recalls the way soul music in the early 1970s was turning its eye to social issues.
• Eddie Murphy, Anika Noni Rose as Lorrell and Keith Robinson as C.C. are joined by a gospel choir. The arrangement lets the voice spread outward from one person to a community.
• This is the song the label discards. The audience watches a beautiful song being kept from the world. The scene shows what Curtis’s Rainbow is beginning to lose.
• It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. At the end of disc 2 of the deluxe edition is a conductor’s demo of the song played by Krieger himself, so you can hear its skeleton before the arrangement.

The moment when Curtis hijacks the ballad C.C. wrote for Effie, turning it into a disco version for the Dreams. Two versions of the same song face off on screen.

• Effie’s version is a slow ballad built on piano and voice. Her plea to stay by her side for just one night is recorded so close you can hear her breathe.
• The Dreams’ version dresses the same melody in a fast disco beat, strings and glittering sound effects. Depending on the arrangement (the reworking of a song’s instruments and rhythm), the same tune flips in meaning from a desperate confession to a dazzling dance number.
• The film stages the contest between the songs through crosscutting that alternates the two versions. What happened in chapter 2, when “Cadillac Car” was buried by a white cover, is repeated this time by Curtis’s own hand.
• The disco version was first released in late summer 2006 as a 12-inch club single and a digital download. In the stage version, too, the face-off between the two versions was the central scene of Act 2.

The song in which Deena, who could never speak in her own voice, sings what is truly in her heart for the first time. It was written new for the film and does not appear in the stage version.

• It begins quietly with a few piano notes, and as the song unfolds, strings and drums join one after another. The growing size of the orchestration traces someone who hesitates and at last lays her whole heart bare.
• Deena’s voice, lightly reined in on “Dreamgirls,” here opens out with full force in the upper register. Listen to the same actor’s two songs back to back and your ears will tell you how much the character has changed.
• The music is by Krieger, Scott Cutler and Beyoncé Knowles, the lyrics by Anne Preven. It is a rare case of a lead actor helping to compose her own character’s song.
• It was nominated for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song and won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Song. Before the film opened, it went to radio first as the soundtrack’s first official single.