'Broadway is a very collaborative effort': David Foster opens up about penning songs for Boop! The Musical

David Foster is the first to admit he's a musical dictator.

It would seem his authoritarian tendencies have served the Canadian producer well. Over his career, they've helped him collect 15 Grammy awards and the respect of his peers.

However, he's found that ruling with an iron fist isn't so welcome on Broadway.

"I cursed everyone," the Los Angeles-based creator said, noting that the experience was filled with "high notes" but also "a lot of drudgery."

"I'm not really a team player — but I became one, I think."

It's an evolution that played out during the making of Boop! The Musical, a Betty Boop-starring production that opened earlier this month at New York's Broadhurst Theater.

When the West Coast music producer first joined as its composer, he wasn't attuned to the East Coast theatre playbook.

"Broadway is a very collaborative effort, unlike my record producing, which is pretty much a dictatorship," he said.

"I'm excited because we got here, we made it," he said of the show's arrival.

"Also, because they can't change anything after (opening day). It's locked. No more new songs."

On a recent video call, the usually dapper 75-year-old is swimming in an oversized white hoodie, one of the few items that made it to his New York hotel room after his luggage was misplaced by the airline.

He's become accustomed to the complications of his bicoastal lifestyle. Boop! The Musical required him to fly back and forth from L.A., where he lives with wife Katharine McPhee and their four-year-old son.

The Broadway show is a stage oddity that seeks to revamp Max Fleischer's famous 1930s cartoon character for contemporary audiences.

It opens with Boop looking for more from her life in ToonTown. She's got fame and fabulousness, but feels a lingering void she can't quite place. When her grandfather's teleportation device winds up in her hands, she beams herself to modern day looking for answers.

Boop lands at New York's 2025 Comic Con and instantly blends in with the convention's colourful cosplayers. But her quest for self-discovery hits a snag when the 'toons back home discover her absence and set off to bring her back.

Jasmine Amy Rogers brings a bubbly humanity to the titular role, which has earned her critical raves, while Foster's jazzy dance tunes and soaring ballads elevate her performance. Tony-winning Kinky Boots director Jerry Mitchell steers the ship.

Foster says that as Boop! neared the finish line, producers wanted him present to approve any last-minute song tweaks. That often left him lingering around New York, waiting to be called upon, which took some getting used to.

Other Broadway practices were equally baffling to the producer, who has worked with the likes of Chicago, Céline Dion and Kenny Loggins.

Early in the process, one of his friends with Broadway experience offered a tip: "You've got to be prepared to throw out your best song." 

It seemed counterintuitive to the co-writer of Whitney Houston's I Have Nothing and Earth, Wind & Fire's After the Love Has Gone. He built his career on sniffing out hits, so why would he ever toss out a successful one?

"Either they made it, or they got thrown out to never be used again because they were terrible," he said.

Sure enough, Foster encountered that exact dilemma while composing for Boop!. A song called Yes, I Remember It Well ranked among his best, he thought, but it wasn't working in the show.

"It didn't move the story along," he said. "And it just didn't fit the narrative."

Ultimately, Foster said he did the unthinkable. He tossed the composition into a so-called "songwriter's drawer," a metaphorical storage chest for unused ideas that he'd heard other songwriters maintain, but he had never used himself.

"I never understood when composers talked about their writing drawer," he said.

"But in the case of Broadway, it seems like you can write a lot of good songs that don't get used. So yes, I do have a drawer now."

Foster supposes other songs in his reserve could land in other musicals. He's already working on music for a stage adaptation of Amy Bloom's 1940s-era novel Lucky Us.

"A good song is a good song, no matter which show it lands in," he said.

However, he's learned those Broadway habits sometimes lead to unexpected consequences. Not long ago, he passed a rejected Boop! melody over to the Lucky Us team. Then, as he sat in a recent Boop! dress rehearsal, he was shocked by what he heard. 

"God, that melody sounds familiar," he remembered thinking.

The Boop! producers had resurrected his old composition, putting it back into the show without Foster knowing. It's put him in the awkward position of having to tell the Lucky Us producers they may need to drop his song for something else.

"It's my fault for not being here more, I guess," he said.

"Wouldn't it be hilarious if it ended up in both musicals? I don't know if that's even legal."