TikTok to the Grammys: How a ‘Bridgerton’ Musical Beat Broadway (Published 2022)

Do you think you’ll continue that way of doing things now that you have this institutional approval?BARLOW We’d love to, but we have some exciting projects after “Bridgerton” gave us a foot in the door and we still have to keep it hush-hush.BEAR Which is totally against our M.O., and it’s a little frustrating because, as we’re writing this music, w... See more

As the spark of an idea started to build, she sought help from a collaborator, Emily Bear, a 19-year-old composer and musician who had been introduced to the world as a 6-year-old piano prodigy but was hoping to prove herself as more than just a former spectacle for daytime talk shows.

“It’s hard to comprehend fully — like, we did this from our bedrooms,” Barlow said in an interview on Monday.

“In my head, there was no way this was going to happen,” Bear added. “We just wanted to put out the album for the people that followed the whole process of it.”

Last year, Barlow had watched the first season of Netflix’s saucy period drama about the elite marriage market of Regency England, along with millions of others searching for escapist entertainment during the pandemic. A 22-year-old aspiring pop singer with a sizable TikTok following, she posted a song that she wrote with a simple but, she thought,... See more

BARLOW I’ve been livestreaming while singing and songwriting for an audience since I was a teenager. It’s like a muscle; the more you do it, the better you get at it. Emily has classic training and is incredibly educated in her craft. I am not, so it was just sort of my process to gain an audience’s perspective on what they thought and how I could ... See more

Where were you each at before this came into your lives?BARLOW We were both really depressed. It is hard to break into the music industry, and I was ready to give up. I was applying for record-label receptionist jobs and crying to my parents because they had been helping to support me in Los Angeles and they were like, “You need to get a real job. ... See more

And there were a lot of those people, weighing in from every corner of the theater-loving internet. Barlow and Bear would livestream their songwriting sessions from Los Angeles, inviting fans to weigh in. Followers shared ideas for staging and choreography, Playbill designs, viral videos of them singing half of a duet and even a pitch to be the sho... See more

Speaking on a video call from their hotel rooms in Las Vegas, where the Grammys were held, Barlow, now 23, and Bear, 20, discussed their album’s unanticipated success, their practice of collaborating creatively with fans and where their careers are headed (starting with a Broadway-bound musical that they can’t yet discuss). Here are edited excerpts... See more

“We want to thank everyone on the internet who has watched us create this album from the ground up,” said Abigail Barlow, who sings for over a dozen different characters on the album. “We share this with you.”