"As If We Never Said Goodbye" is a song from the musical Sunset Boulevard. It was written by Don Black, Christopher Hampton (with extra lyrics by Amy Powers), and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Ben Rimalower of Playbill called it Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest song.
In Sunset Boulevard, the main character, Norma Desmond, expresses her desire to return to the fame she once had.
The song was performed by Barbra Streisand. It appears on her album Back to Broadway and on her live albums The Concert and Back to Brooklyn.
Elaine Paige included the song on her album Encore.
Countertenor Chris Colfer, playing the character Kurt Hummel in Glee season 2's episode "Born This Way," performed the song. A review in Salon described Colfer's performance as transforming the song into a message about self-understanding and a young, gay singer's dream of treating the world like a stage and claiming it as a star.
English tenor Alfie Boe recorded his version of the song on his 2010 album Bring Him Home.
Jason Manford included the song on his 2017 album A Different Stage. This recording was later used to open the 2020 Royal Variety Performance.
Barbra Streisand version
In 1994, American singer, songwriter, actress, and director Barbra Streisand released her version of the song "As If We Never Said Goodbye." The song is from her twenty-sixth studio album, Back to Broadway (1993), and reached number 20 on the UK Singles Chart. It also appears on the live albums The Concert and Back to Brooklyn.
The song was originally written for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical Sunset Boulevard. Sam Wood of The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that Streisand added her own unique style to the song when she performed it. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post called "As If We Never Said Goodbye" the standout track of Back to Broadway. He described the song as emotional and familiar, with a melody that builds to a powerful ending. He wrote that Streisand's performance of the lyrics, such as "This world's waited long enough/ I've come home at last," connects to the album's themes and audience expectations.