Greatest Hits Ten: "Six"
We’ve reached the finale of Bristol Show Choir’s Greatest Hits blogs! It’s our tenth tune as chosen by our amazing cast members, and some might say if you’ll forgive the pun, it’s the jewel in our crown…
The tenth song to complete our greatest hits is “Six” from the musical of the same name by Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss. Taking the form of a concert instead of more traditional musical theatre telling the story of each Queen, this musical re-imagines the six wives of Henry VIII coming together to form a pop group, each vying for position as lead singer by sharing their stories and seeing who suffered the most by being married to him.
This song is the finale to the show, where all the Queens come to realise that they don’t need to be defined by their history and can celebrate themselves and their achievements. It’s a real upbeat, positive and empowering number to sing, and we think that’s why we think it resonates so strongly with the Bristol Show Choir cast.
It's not just us who are fans though: since Six started life at the Edinburgh Festival presented by Cambridge University students in 2017, it has gone from strength to strength with productions in the West End, on Broadway, and many international iterations, including Australia, New Zealand, and even aboard Norweigan Cruise Line! For us, we first introduced our arrangement of “Six” during a Show Choir workshop and was so well received that we wanted to add it to our repertoire!
What stands out in this song and what makes it so fun to sing is the energy and feel: each of the Queens has their own style and feel, reflecting a different era of music or female singer. The melody shifts around a lot in the verses between the Altos, Sopranos and Tenors: the Altos sing Catherine of Aragon and Anna of Cleves, the Sopranos get to give us their best Jane Seymour, the only one he truly loved (rude) and Catherine Parr, and the Tenors take on Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. What we’ve tried to emphasise in our arrangement is focusing on the personality and fun of the lyrics and reflect that when we sing. Of course, we still want to sing technically well, but of all our greatest hits this is the one that we’ve been able to relax a little more and “play” with – there are some lovely moments of interaction between the choir as we react to certain lyrics.
It’s a definite crowd pleaser and always gets an enthusiastic reception when we’ve busked or performed it, and we’re immensely proud of the hard work and enthusiasm our cast have given to this and all our other Greatest Hits this term.
