Record Rack

Before staging “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice introduced their rock opera through an original-cast-style album with actors vividly singing character roles. Nearly 30 years later, this theatrical project-in-development by Elton John and Rice--teaming for the first time since “The Lion King”--might have benefited from that approach.

Instead, we get a collection of superstar showcases with little sense of narrative, or even unifying production. It’s Elton, so there’s plenty of tuneful songcraft, while Rice provides typically colorful verse--but there’s far more rhyme than reason.

Why reggae for the opening “One More Pyramid,” sung by Sting? It’s not a musical motif, since it never appears again. Elsewhere, the Spice Girls sing about underwear in the faux-Motown “My Strongest Suit”; LeAnn Rimes and John over-emote in the current hit ballad “Written in the Stars”; and Boyz II Men, James Taylor, Lenny Kravitz, Tina Turner, Shania Twain and Dru Hill all fare fine, but with no signs that they even know what the story is.

Which puts them in the same boat as the listener. Rice notes in accompanying material that this is not based on the 1871 opera but is rather a new setting of the story that inspired it. Still, he and John could have taken cues from Verdi and his collaborators on building some action into the music.

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