Airing December of 2020, Bridgerton was one of Netflix’s biggest hits of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the books by Julia Quinn, the Netflix series reached 82 million views within the first month of its release. The series gained more and more attention as sections of audio made its way onto the popular social media platform TikTok.
One particular account found inspiration in the series and shared that inspiration on TikTok. Abigail Barlow found inspiration in the Netflix series sixteen days after its release, and posted a video on her TikTok account (@abigailbarlowww) asking the question “What if Bridgerton was a musical?”, in the video she sings her own song that she titled “Daphne’s Song” (https://www.tiktok.com/@abigailbarlowww/video/6916241393144892677?is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v1&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=7007879185675552261 ) this song is now called “Ocean’s Away” on the final version of the album. After posting this video she saw how much attention and hype that she was getting, so she decided to recruit her writing partner Emily Bear, TikTok (@emilythebear), to help her continue the song writing process. They continued the series for weeks creating more and more songs to go along with scenes and dialogue from the series, writing songs like “Burn for You”, “Penelope Featherington”, “If I Were a Man”, and many more.
In late January of 2021 the duo, Barlow & Bear as they call themselves, were featured on BBC to share the story of Bridgerton the Musical. The artists gained more traction receiving pieces on Entertainment Tonight, the host going as far as asking the Bridgerton cast what they themselves thought about the musical, and getting articles written about them in popular sites like playbill.com which is home of all things Broadway, Cosmopolitan, and even Daily Mail. They were even guests on the Kelly Clarkson show in February of 2021. After months of writing the songs and creating the album as a whole, they were able to record the album-after negotiating copyright claims and getting the go ahead from Netflix and all other parties that they needed to get the necessary okays from. During this whole process in April of 2021, they were signed to CAA (a global talent agency) and Kraft-Engel Management. In May of 2021 the duo were joined by Glee and Broadway star Darren Criss to sing some of their songs from the musical (https://www.tiktok.com/@abigailbarlowww/video/6961071003300678917?is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v1&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=7007879185675552261 ).
Abigail announced on her TikTok on August 4th, 2021 that their album The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical album would be released on streaming platforms on September 10th, 2021. As the album was released four days ago, it is time to talk about how well it is doing less than a week after its release. The day of its release, the album reached #1 on the iTunes pop album charts less than an hour and a half after dropping. In less than 24 hours they had reached #9 Worldwide on iTunes. The album is averaging a million plus streams daily on all platforms where it can be streamed. The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical album holds 15 songs and has a run time of 37 minutes and 33 seconds. Some accounts on TikTok found that you can play certain songs and it matches almost perfectly with the scenes that it is meant to coincide with. As someone who watched the show and has listened to the album on repeat since its release, I can proudly say that this album does the show justice and makes me even more excited for Netflix to release the second season of the show. It also has me wanting to go back and rewatch the show with the album playing during specific scenes of the show.
This album will not be the last we hear by Barlow & Bear, in fact they have already begun to perform their version of the album live at festivals and performed at the 50th Kennedy Center Honors on PBS on September 14th, 2021.
The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical songs and album can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, iTunes, Amazon Music, TIDAL, Pandora, and Anghami.
