A new fad on YouTube is to compile videos of what you consider the Top 100 Broadway Songs of All Time. Someone who calls himself Mister Lister has compiled this one. I don't expect you to agree with his rankings — I don't — but you might enjoy spending an hour listening to a teensy excerpt of each. And the video is very well edited.
I've seen about a dozen of these online, some of which have been taken down due to alleged copyright infringements. All the ones I've seen show a preference for recent musicals, especially Hamilton, Wicked, The Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen and Les Miz. In fact, every one I've looked at has more selections from Hamilton than from the entire collaborative works that involved Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein or both. The list compilers are of course entitled to their opinions but you wonder how much of their selections have to do with what speaks more directly to their generation…or maybe they just haven't seen that many shows.
Mr. Lister's Top 100 here has, I think, one Lerner and Loewe song, not much Sondheim, one Cole Porter, no Meredith Willson, lotsa Lloyd-Webber, etc. His rules for inclusion exclude instrumentals and shows that never played Broadway. He says songs written for movies are ineligible but he includes "You're the One That I Want," which was written for the movie of Grease. Some of the other lists don't have the same rules. One I saw includes some of the Four Seasons' songs heard in Jersey Boys and "Singin' in the Rain," which was not only not written for the stage, it wasn't even written for the movie, Singin' in the Rain.
But hey, they're all just someone's list. When you make up your list, you can make up your rules at the same time. Your list wouldn't match mine, mine wouldn't match yours…or even mine if I redid it tomorrow. Just enjoy the excerpts and don't bitch that so many of your favorites aren't in this…