The Grease musical follows a high school romance between Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski. One summer, Danny and Sandy fell in love but had to say their goodbyes as they didn't live near each other. Later that summer, Sandy moves to a new area and enrolls at Rydell High for her senior year.
The song is the showcase piece of the Teen Angel, a phantom teen idols who makes his only appearance in the musical to sing the song, Beauty School Dropout. The Teen Angel is Frenchy's Guardian Angle, a Fabian look-alike, dressed in all-white. The Teen Angel appears to Frenchy, who, having recently dropped out of beauty school out of frustration with her teachers, asks for a guardian angel in the mould of those seen in Debbies Reynolds movies. The Angel descends from the heavens, then pointedly sings to her that she lacks work ethic and suggests that she return to high school so that she might eventually qualify for a career as a stenographer later in life.
Never considering myself much of a singer, The Teen Angel was my first solo song as a supporting role in a musical.
This sophisticated, suave, playboy whose flirtatious guidance sends Frenchy back to school, was a character, right up my street.
Grease was a particularly poignant performance for me, as not only was it a performance in which I sang to a live audience for the first time, but I was also an assisting lighting designer and backstage manager.
