The Musical Musical

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An inordinate amount of musicals are about professional singers and dancers, who are themselves sometimes performing in musicals. The advantages are obvious—the creators get to write what they know, the characters actually have a good reason to keep breaking into song (this doesn't mean that they don't still break into song off stage as well), and musical numbers can be thrown in without needing any kind of plot relevance.

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Examples of The Musical Musical include:

• All musical biopics, of course -- Walk the Line (Johnny Cash), Ray (Ray Charles), La Vie en Rose (Edith Piaf), Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis), Yankee Doodle Dandy (George M. Cohan), and so on, and so forth.
• Show Boat, as the title suggests, is about performers on a show boat.
• Cabaret, as the title suggests, is about performers in a cabaret.
• Kiss Me Kate—often described as a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew—would be more accurately described as a musical about a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew.
• The Music Man is a light example: Harold Hill is selling band instruments, band uniforms and the false promise of starting a band. At the very end the band does wind up performing, once, not very well. The fact that his love interest is a music teacher adds to things a bit.
• A Chorus Line features dancers auditioning for a show.
• Chicago is about a wannabe singer, with the secondary female lead a former singer ("former" because now she's in prison).
• Easter Parade is about a vaudeville dance act.
• Singin in The Rain is about the making of a musical motion picture.
• The musical version of Hairspray is about the stars of a dance-oriented TV show.
• The musical version of Billy Elliot is about a dance student.
• Pal Joey is about a nightclub singer.
• The Band Wagon is about the staging of a musical.
• Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge is about a show being put on in the club-turned-theater.
• The Sound of Music is about a family singing act.
  • Also, the "Lonely Goatherd" puppet show.
• Fame is set at a performing arts school.
• West Point Story is about a musical show being put on at West Point.
• In Top Hat, Fred Astaire plays a song-and-dance man.
• Once is about a busker.
• The Commitments is about a working-class Irish band.
• Every High School Musical film is about the staging of a high school musical.
  • Not the second, though it is about a talent contest that many of the cast members are planning to sing at.
  • Even better, the first two films have stage adaptations.
• Bye Bye Birdie is about a 50s rock singer performing one last concert before he goes off to the army.
• The Phantom of the Opera, strangely enough.
• Glee is about a high school glee club.
• Title of Show features friends writing a musical.
  • Not only that, but the musical they are writing is [title of show]. They are writing a musical about writing a musical about writing a musical about writing a musical about...
• Curtains is about a murder investigation on the set of an off-Broadway musical.
• Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Eva and Adolf at Berchtesgaden
• 42nd Street
• Miss Adelaide and the Hotbox Girls in Guys and Dolls.