A 2012 UK Tour Cast Recording was never released. Rightly so, but we’ll discuss that later. As such, I feel it’s a bit unfair for me to write about it. But! The production was released on DVD and written into the history books. The audio rip of this show is in my collection and from time to time, if I’m in the mood to laugh, I listen to a few tracks. This album has an it’s-so-bad-it’s-good quality to it. The orchestrations aren’t terrible, but the vocals are just such a let down for a production with such promotion, hype, and big-name headliners.

Lowlights Highlights Notable tracks include the opening Heaven on their Minds. The guitar intro starts and for a few seconds, this sounds like a pretty normal production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera with high production value. Tim Minchin sings the first verse with nothing unusual happening. But the second verse begins, and he is autotuned more and more as the track goes on. It ends with him exploding into a supernova of autotuned yell/belt/scream/singing. Atrocious. But do I love it? I’m not sure.

In What’s the Buzz, Melanie Chisholm, of Spice Girls fame, runs out of breath during her first verse. In the same verse, she stumbles over the rhythm/pitch and is autotuned accordingly. The duet with Minchin that leads into Strange Thing Mystifying is pretty awkward. Minchen holds the rhythm together and tries to coax Chisholm to hit the right beats, but to no avail.

Everything’s Alright lacks all emotional and complexities that were ever intended to exist in this song. This song is a Webber classic sung by one of the most iconic women in history (Mary Magdalene, not Chisholm) and is butchered by a singer who sounds like she is chain smoking between verses, gasping for air. Minchin jumps in with his verses and tries to overcompensate by growling some of his lines. But just a terrible recording of this song.

Simon Zealotes is not terrible. I’d have to rewatch it to see for certain, but it sounds like everyone is doing high intensity NSYNC POP dance moves for the entire track. Maybe the mics are too close to the mouth and everyone’s breaths are highlighted? Ben Forster’s rendition of Poor Jerusalem is not terrible, either. Forster attained the role by winning a UK talent search TV show.

And then, The Temple. What kind of crazy human would destroy the score to such a hauntingly beautiful song with such abominable instrumentation. The driving, pulsing, techno inspired beats that hit on every downbeat are maddening. It’s almost as if Forster decides to forget how to sing for both of his verses.

The Temple is about as far as I am capable of listening to this recording from front to back. Skipping around a bit I gather that there’s not much to look forward to to keep this ship afloat. King Herod’s song isn’t terrible, but doesn’t manage to make this production any more memorable.

I actually enjoy the orchestrations and choral parts of Act 2’s Could We Start Again Please, but the Spice Girl fails to redeem herself in this one. The only track I didn’t loathe was This Jesus Must Die. The cast director found men with a wide arrange of vocal ranges/talents to cover all the appropriate bases of this villainous song.

Overall, a terrible recording. Only long standing JCS fans and avid collectors should bother obtaining this. There are dozens (and dozens) of recordings of JCS I would recommended before this one.