Best 90s Musical - "Rent"
This is probably my favorite show on the list; it made me fall in love with Broadway in the first place, though, at the time, it sounded nothing like Broadway. Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece really did change the face of the Great White Way forever. Now, we have rock-filled shows like "Spring Awakening" and Green Day's "American Idiot" opening on Broadway as a regular occurrence. The show's philosophy, "No day but today," is still something I try to live by every day, and it's fitting and unbelievably heartrending that Larson died the very day his show opened off-Broadway. (It moved to Broadway shortly afterwards.) My favorite song is the spare, haunting "One Song Glory," which, ironically enough, is about a character trying to write a great song, not realizing he's doing it in the process. Unfortunately, the song he comes up with in the end, "Your Eyes," is hackneyed and uninspiring, but that didn't deter my love of the show, which also features the rockin' title track and too many amazing ballads to list here, the most popular of which is "Seasons of Love." Once in a while, you see something that not only exceeds your expectations, which were already pumped high from all the praise you hear beforehand, but it opens your eyes to the wonderful beauty and mystery of life itself. Now, over a decade later, I'm perhaps too old and bitter to relate to the struggling, starving-artists story of Mark and Roger, but these guys, and this show, will always have a special place in my heart. Just make sure you ignore the movie version.