i cannot fucking understand musicals

I like the theatre arts as much as the next fellow (provided he could really give a damn one way or the other) but I cannot fucking understand musicals. There is some part of me that sees people breaking into song at a dramatic point in a performance to be the most absurd thing ever.
I've been watching a lot of Turner Classic Movies lately. This is contrary to my usual stance about not watching TV but this doesn't really count. I really like old movies. Just now, I'm watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Sometimes old movies are fucking dumb. In this one, this newly married guy with six brothers who live with him in a remote locale notices that the brothers are hard up for some action. They inform him that they're in love with some women who live nearby but have no chance at getting them. His response is simple. Quoting the story of the Sabine women, he tells them that they need to go and kidnap the women and drag them back to their house (!?). So the men are sort of, you know, not convinced that it's such a good idea. They sort of argue that it might be better to, like, not drag the women of their affection out of their homes. Adam (the married one) finally decides that the only tool he can use to convince them that stealing women is a good idea is a song, composed on the spot and delivered in a beautiful baritone. The display is so convincing (now hang on a damned minute. I'm no rhetorician but I'm not real sure that the best way to convince someone of something is to sing your argument to them. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if, during the last set of presidential debates, John Kerry had phrased his retorts in the form of song, things would be worlds different. I can just hear it now "Oh Mister Buuuuuush, your stupidityyy is mind numbinggggg. Your foooooreign poooolicy is absolute shiiiiiit". I mean, I would argue that if he would have SAID those things, things would be different but that's for another day)(ok, bad example. Kerry singing would have been fucking incredible) that the brothers are won over instantly and begin to sing along in perfect harmony. Now, I don't know if you've ever gotten seven people in a room and tried to get one of them to sing a song while composing it in his head and then the others to anticipate the composition and compose sympathetic harmonies, while singing them, but it fucking doesn't work. (OK I haven't tried it either but I'm pretty sure about this). I mean, i feel like he'd have just as good a chance at looking convincing if he were giving a blowjob to a jackass. Now, i know what you're gonna say. your're gonna say "but Mike, you didn't raise any hell at all about Yoda using the force to lift an enormous fucking spaceship out of the mud in "the Empire Strikes Back". Of course that's less realistic than a bunch of singing. But i was predared for that Yoda shit ahead of time by a bunch of other clues about what i should expect (Like, for instance, the part in the beginning that tells me about how that shit took place long ago, in a galaxy far, far away). That, and the fact that when i first saw Starwars i was like three. Maybe they should just put a big reeling warning at the beginning of every musical saying "some time that isn't now, in a galaxy where everyone can make up bullshit songs about stupid-ass nonsense on the spot, there lived these ridiculous, annoying people who thought it would be cool to sing about everything, even being in fucking jail (sorry elvis but the premise sucks). Perhaps then I could watch musicals and not be confused.