This is partly Lloyd Webber's own fault. His melodies sometimes skirt perilously close to earlier classical and Broadway sources, and while the showbiz axiom that "good writers borrow, great writers steal" may well apply, it is also true that some of his tunes, both large and small,evoke earlier sources. As drama critic John Simon wrote after the première of Phantom: "It's not so much that Lloyd Webber lacks an ear for melody as that he has too much of a one for other people's melodies.... I predict that Gershwin and Rodgers, let alone Puccini and Ravel (another of his magnets), have nothing to fear from him." Other critics have been less subtle: "Webber's music isn't so painful to hear, if you don't mind its being so soiled from previous use," wrote Michael Feingold of the Village Voice.
