Are some pop songs actually too good for the Broadway stage?

In the half-decade since the meteoric success of “Mamma Mia!” – the musical based on the music of ABBA – Broadway has gradually come to resemble one of those PBS oldies reunions, with one “jukebox musical” after another assembled around the catalogs of rock and pop musicians.

As Rodgers and Hart have given way to Bacharach and David, these top 40 tuners have replaced the sung-through London “poperas” of the 1980s as Broadway’s favorite whipping boy. But just as “Les Miserables” transcended its bombastic roots, only die-hard purists would dispute that “Mamma Mia!” “Movin’ Out,” and “Jersey Boys” – the most recent and, for my money, the best one of the jukebox-musical lot – are worthwhile additions to the Broadway stage. The genre has proved itself financially and (at times) artistically, but an odder question has surfaced: Why is it that good rock songs make for bad musicals and vice versa?

Of the seven jukebox musicals to reach Broadway in the last five seasons, four draw upon the work of indisputable pop legends: the Beach Boys (“Good Vibrations”), Elvis Presley (“All Shook Up”), the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David (“The Look of Love”), and John Lennon (“Lennon”). These have also been the four worst shows, although “All Shook Up” did have its moments. (And to be fair, “Lennon” tied one musical hand behind its own back by ignoring Lennon’s Beatles songs.)

The better pieces, by contrast, have used the catalogs of ABBA (“Mamma Mia!”), Billy Joel (“Movin’ Out”), and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (“Jersey Boys”). The ticket to jukebox-musical success on Broadway, it would appear, is to forgo the top tier of talent and go for the B-plus-list. Never mind the Sex Pistols, here comes the Buzzcocks.

It’s entirely possible that the producers of the Lennon, Beach Boys, and Bacharach-David shows didn’t care as much about putting together a good product, simply assuming the music would carry the day. But more than that, I believe certain songs lodge themselves so deeply in the listeners’ psyche that no amount of restaging can convince audiences to hear them anew and connect to them in the context of the show. It’s no coincidence that the highlight of these three misfires was Marcy Harriell’s scorching rendition of “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” one of the least famous songs in “Lennon.”

A strong stigma has been attached to the term “jukebox musical,” but what does it really mean? Do “Crazy for You” or “My One and Only,” which added several chestnuts to old George and Ira Gershwin shows, qualify? Then what about the critically savaged “Fascinating Rhythm,” which dropped the Gershwins’ greatest hits into a tacky revue? The underrated book to “All Shook Up” accommodated Elvis tunes in a modern-day “Twelfth Night” plot line, but “Play On!” did the exact same thing with Duke Ellington songs. “Ain’t Misbehavin'” and “Jelly’s Last Jam” honored jazz legends Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton – what about them? Or “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in New York”? Or “A Class Act”?

The music of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, it bears remembering, once was the popular music of America. As late as the 1950s, the cast recordings of “My Fair Lady” and “The Sound of Music” spent years on the Billboard top 40 list in the late 1950s, but this was a sort of last hurrah for Broadway on the charts. “Rock Around the Clock” went to no. 1 in 1955, and rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay. Theater buffs, who view this as heralding the wind-down of Broadway’s “Golden Age,” look none too kindly on rock music further encroaching on their territory.

What we’re really talking about are shows jury-rigged around the works of singers or songwriters whose work debuted after 1955 and who got airtime on top 40 radio. One recent borderline case is the Peter Allen bio-musical “The Boy From Oz,” but his work primarily existed outside the pop music sphere. The Tony-winning “Contact,” meanwhile, featured plenty of top 40 tunes but didn’t focus on any particular artist or era. (Though, come to think of it, isn’t that true of most actual jukeboxes?)

By this definition, the current trend has two obvious progenitors – both shows that, fittingly, focused on the early years of rock ‘n’ roll. “Buddy” (as in Holly) came to the United States from London in late 1990 with a wave of publicity, inhabiting a Shubert Theatre that had been occupied for the previous 15 years by “A Chorus Line.” It closed within six months, but “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” a revue of Jerry Leiber-Mike Stoller tunes, opened in early 1995 and was still standing when Y2K rolled around.

I missed “Buddy,” but “Smokey Joe” was one of the goofiest jukebox musicals yet, a glorified theme-park show enlivened by Jerry Zaks’s full-throttle pacing and a slew of strong performers. And, true to form, this nutrient-free piece was filled with some of the most glorious songs of rock’s early days, from “There Goes My Baby” to “Spanish Harlem” to “Stand by Me.”

This “bad songs = good show” theory could be taken too far. I am neither stumping for a Milli Vanilli jukebox musical nor suggesting that actual Beatles songs would have made “Lennon” even worse. (I’m hard-pressed to think of anything that could have made “Lennon” worse.) But an impressive batch of songs is not nearly enough.

Viewed through this context, the upcoming crop of jukebox musicals takes on a very different feel. “Hot Feet,” constructed around the works of funk-R&B stalwarts Earth Wind & Fire, rises up a notch or two by dint of the band’s engaging but spotty track record. By contrast, the quality of Bob Dylan’s and Johnny Cash’s better material casts a pall over “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “Ring of Fire,” respectively.

Director-choreographer Twyla Tharp could scuttle this theory instantly – and I hope she does – by making “Times” a success. Or projected pieces devoted to Neil Sedaka and (I’m not kidding) Chicago could live down to expectations. But in the meantime, run for the hills if the threatened Bruce Springsteen musical materializes. As Bruce himself put it, “This town rips the bones from your back.”