Jesus Christ Superstar is a 1970 album musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, on which the 1971 rock opera was based.

Lloyd Webber explained, “It was agreed that we would first sort of ‘send up a flag' to see whether the public would accept our approach to the subject.

The melody of "I Don't Know How to Love Him" also predates Jesus Christ Superstar; it was rewritten from a 1968 Lloyd Webber/Rice collaboration titled "Kansas Morning".

[13] For the recording, Lloyd Webber and Rice drew personnel from both musical theatre (Murray Head had just left the West End production of Hair) and the British rock scene (Ian Gillan had only recently become the singer of Deep Purple).

Many of the primary musicians—guitarists Neil Hubbard and Henry McCullough, bassist Alan Spenner, and drummer Bruce Rowland—came from Joe Cocker's backing group The Grease Band.

Staying well within limits prescribed by the Gospels, the opera galvanizes the story and the scenes of the Passion with its own fresh imagination and vitality.

"[20] Billboard's critic wrote, "This brilliant musical portrayal of the last seven days of Jesus is destined to become one of the most talked about and provocative albums on the pop scene.

In fact, when it isn't dead boring it's embarrassing..."[25] All compositions written by Tim Rice (lyrics and book) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (music).

[27] In 2021, for the 50th anniversary of the original staging, Universal Music Group released an expanded reissue (under its Decca Broadway imprint) consisting of 3 CDs and a hardback book.

[28] The book includes many photos from the era, an extensive chronicle of the making of the album (compiled by writer Lois Wilson from interviews with Lloyd Webber, Rice, Yvonne Elliman, Murray Head, Ian Gillan and the musicians involved in the album), appreciations by English comedian/musician Matt Berry and Chic founder Nile Rodgers, a facsimile of the lyric book included within the original 1970 album and the script for an "open-end interview" (i.e. a pre-recorded interview with music and gaps for radio DJs and presenters to insert their own voices) with Lloyd Webber and Rice, whose audio part is on the third disc.