Okay so, everyone’s written love letters to how good the soundtrack of Hamilton is (and you should listen to it seriously it is fantastic)
But I need to talk for a second about the meta involved in the musical construction.
The main musical genres used in the soundtrack are rap, right? We know that already ‘cause that’s what got everyone’s attention in the first place – a MUSICAL about ALEXANDER HAMILTON casting POC ACTORS in MAIN ROLES and RAPPING????????
But lookit this, the soundtrack isn’t ONLY comprised of rap and R&B numbers.
There is one character in particular who sings a classic musical number like you’d expect from a Broadway show: King George.
So right here you have the Classic Showtune style of King George at odds with the rap/R&B style of the American revolutionaries.
The writer of the show, Lin-Manuel Miranda (In The Heights), has gone on record saying that the reason he chose to do a rap musical is because rap and R&B have been The Music Of The People for the past thirty years.
So right at the start you have the narrative of the young, frustrated, Revolutionaries railing against the Old World Order with new visions of what a country and a government Should be, by pitting the old school idea of what a Showtune is against something that Broadway has never really heard before – at least not this successfully or this completely.
But then you keep going deeper into it, right? Rap has always traditionally been a collaborative effort – there are very few, if any, rap songs out there that don’t have the backing of a chorus, at the very least. It’s just sort of the nature of the genre, no rapper raps alone, they always have support. Likewise, while there are solos in the songs in Hamilton, no character sings entirely alone. They’re either backed up by the ensemble, or they’re joined by one or more of the other characters.
In contrast, King George only sings alone. His songs are entirely just him. There’s no backup singers or anything.
Not until, at the very end of the song and at least one of the reprises, he calls for everyone to sing with him, and even then it’s just a couple of lines of meaningless “dadada da das.” So even where there are other voices singing along, where the Revolutionaries willingly join in of their own volition (either to support or debate, it doesn’t matter), King George’s brief backup is ordered to.
So there you have the Democracy versus Monarchy comparison.
And last but not least.
All of King George’s songs are reprises of the first one. Even after the Revolution is over, you know, he changes up some of the lyrics, but it’s still the same tune.
Because a monarchy by definition is unchanging until the individual monarch’s death, and even then there’s no guarantee because of course they’re usually kept within a family. So a monarchy cannot, by its own nature, have anything new to offer.
I need to go see this showwwwwwwww, everything about it is incredible, but the tickets are sold out for three months straight.
A lot of people have reblogged this post pointing out that “Burn” is a strictly solo piece and therefore doesn’t fit into this theory.
I’ll admit, when I first wrote this, I was in the middle of only my second listen-through, so I was writing mostly off of my impressions of the first listen-through.
I have since listened to it a few more times and specifically went back to “Burn” to double-check what it did.
And, of course, I found that it really was far outside of the structure established with the rest of the soundtrack that I vaguely outlined here (and that a lot of other people have added onto).
My response to that is: Of course it is.
“Burn” exists outside of the structure of the rest of the libretto because … wait for it … she’s taking herself out of the narrative.
You know how some people, when they go through a bad breakup, cut their hair or dye it a wild color, get a piercing, grow a beard? Just something that helps them remove themselves from the person they were while they were in that relationship?
Well, what do you do in a musical where one of the most poignant things is the musical style? You drop it.
Eliza sings by herself, in a style much more reminiscent of Traditional Broadway than anything else in the show (barring King George) because she’s removing herself from the story they were telling.
“Burn” exists outside of the structure of the rest of the libretto because … wait for it … she’s taking herself out of the narrative.
(Source: justcallmepoppy, via skymurdock)
