It seems that they’re making a High Fidelity musical (via Stereogum). This sounds like it has the potential to be incredibly naff, a terrible travesty of a pop cultural milestone. Of course, I thought that when I first heard about the film version, but it turned out to be pretty good.
But checking out the “music” section of the musical’s website (and I use the quote marks deliberately), there’s only one thing to say: the songs sound atrocious. The Rob character of the book or film would kick the singer of these words straight out of Championship Vinyl - check out the lyrics of “Desert Island Top 5 Breakups”:
“These were the ones that tore my heart out / These were the ones that ate me alive
You might squeeze the top 10 Laura / But you’re nowhere near the top 5…”
Urgh. “Nine Percent Chance” (which refers to when Laura says facetiously to Rob that there’s a 9% chance of them getting back together) has the even more execrable couplet: “You paved the way for romance / When you kept him out of your pants”.
Good Lord, at first glance, it sounds like they kept all the plot elements and didn’t understand a single bit of the soul of the book.