StarKid, Captain America & ‘Oklahoma!’ Meet Atop Billboard’s Cast Albums Chart

It’s a busy week on Billboard’s Cast Albums chart (dated Sept. 30), as the original cast recordings of StarKid’s Nerdy Prudes Must Die., Disney and Marvel’s Rogers: The Musical and the world-premiere complete studio cast recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! debut at Nos. 1, 2 and 8 respectively. Meanwhile, New York, New York: A New Musical re-enters at No. 4 (a new peak) after its release on CD.

With the arrivals at Nos. 1, 2 and 8 on Cast Albums, it’s the first time at least three albums have debuted in the top 10 in the same week in more than four years. It last happened on the June 22, 2019-dated list, when the original Broadway cast recordings of Beetlejuice and Tootsie launched at Nos. 2 and 6, while the 2019 Broadway cast recording of Kiss Me, Kate! bowed at No. 8.

Billboard’s Cast Albums chart ranks the top-selling musical cast recordings of the week in the U.S., based on traditional album sales, as tracked by Luminate.

Nerdy Prudes Must Die. is “a teen slasher comedy about a group of geeks and their ghostly tormentor.” The show, with music and lyrics by Jeff Blim, had a brief run at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood, Calif. in February. It’s the third No. 1 on the Cast Albums chart for the StarKid production team, following Black Friday (in 2020) and Starship (2011). In total, Nerdy Prudes is the 17th charting effort on Cast Albums from StarKid, with 13 having reached the top 10. StarKid’s first entry on the tally was Me and My Dick, which peaked at No. 11 in 2010.

Rogers: The Musical – an abridged version of the life of the first Avenger, Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) – had a limited run at Disney California Adventure Park’s Hyperion Theater in Anaheim, Calif. from June 30-Aug. 31. Rogers’new original songs were written by composer Christopher Lennertz, with lyrics by Jordan Peterson, Lennertz and Alex Karukas. The new tunes were joined by earlier-penned songs like “Save the City” (music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman) and “Star-Spangled Man” (by Alan Menken and David Zeppel).

Rogers: The Musical is the first cast recording from a Disney Parks-presented stage show to chart on Billboard’s 17-year-old Cast Albums ranking. Previous musical shows staged at the Hyperion include Frozen: Live at the Hyperion (2016-20) and Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular (2003-16). (The Broadway versions of Aladdin and Frozen saw their companion cast recordings hits Nos. 1 and 2 on the Cast Albums chart.)

Both Nerdy Prudes Must Die. and Rogers: The Musical were only available to purchase as digital download albums. The third debut in the Cast Album chart’s top 10, the new studio cast recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, was available as a download and on CD and vinyl.

The studio cast recording of Oklahoma! was released by Chandos Records and is the first recording to boast the complete score performed with Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations. Oklahoma! was the first musical written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and it premiered on Broadway in 1943. It was later adapted into a film in 1955, which won two Academy Awards and launched a soundtrack that spent four weeks atop Billboard’s Best Selling Popular Albums chart in 1956. Oklahoma! has been revived on Broadway four times, most recently in 2019, when it won two Tony Awards, including best revival of a musical.

Finally, the original Broadway cast recording of New York, New York: A New Musical, re-enters Cast Albums at No. 4, having previously spent one week on the list at No. 7 (on the July 8-dated chart). The album returns to the list following its Sept. 15 release on CD, as the set was only previously available to purchase as a digital download. New York, New York played for three months at the St. James Theatre in New York earlier in 2023 and garnered nine Tony Award nominations, winning one for best scenic design of a musical.