Evolution of Chess Songs

We've had a lot of demos for Bjorn, Benny, and Tim Rice's musical Chess emerge throughout the years, and I thought it would be fun to delve into the different versions that we have for certain songs, from early demo with simple lyrics and vocals to the final completed version as heard in the concept album, much like my Evolution of ABBA songs video I made a while back.

For this video I also included pieces of ABBA songs that ultimately became Chess tracks, or at least demos that never ended up making it into the musical.

I've had the idea for this video for a while now, but considering this year marks Chess' 40th anniversary, it seemed like the best time to do it.

Now I will say I've never actually been all that familiar with the songs with the exception of a few standout songs, so in preparation for this video I watched 2009's Chess In Concert, starring Idina Menzel, Josh Groban, and Adam Pascal just to name a few, and after all these years I finally seem to have a more proper idea of what the musical is about, and since watching that and then subsequently working on this video, I keep on getting the songs stuck in my head!

Despite all that, I still wouldn't consider myself a Chess expert, so I cannot guarantee with certainty the accuracy of the information in this video. However most of the information I used comes from Tim Rice's own podcast, and I assume that is accurate considering he literally wrote the musical with the Bs. So if there are any errors, please be kind.

Anyway, I did the best I could and am pretty happy with the way this video turned out, and I hope you enjoy it too.

SOURCES:

   • Evolution of Chess sources