When watching the show Satisfied, Room Where It Happens, It's Quiet Uptown (which made me cry...awww), Right Hand Man, What I'd Miss, Alexander Hamilton, and You'll Be Back really jumped out at me. But wow, the entire set list...wow!
In the theater, certainly, "It's Quiet Uptown" is beyond powerful. As someone noted, it creates the ugly cry in men who don't do ugly cry. I sat next to a stranger whose face didn't move for two hours, and then dissolved. Which only made me feel the same. The song is beautiful, but its impact is wrenching, all the more so because the staging, so elegant and simple, is exquisite.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
For me "The Room Where it Happens" is easily the best song in the score-and Leslie Odom, Jr. is incredible singing it and in performance. (I do tend to listen to Odom's tracks more than any others on here-his voice is just amazing.)
I also do like "The Schuyler Sisters" and "Helpless". I must say that while I enjoy the King George numbers, I must be in the vast minority that prefers Brian D'Arcy James' portrayal. I loved his vocal intonations and his falsetto. Jonathan Groff is fine-there was just something about James' performance that was pitch perfect.
"In the theater, certainly, "It's Quiet Uptown" is beyond powerful. As someone noted, it creates the ugly cry in men who don't do ugly cry. I sat next to a stranger whose face didn't move for two hours, and then dissolved. Which only made me feel the same. The song is beautiful, but its impact is wrenching, all the more so because the staging, so elegant and simple, is exquisite."
Oh man, that song kills me just listening to it, so I'm definitely going to be a total mess when I see it :'(
In general, when I was first listening to the recording I was finding myself drawn to the more fun first act songs, but the more I listen to the show all the way through, I'm gaining a deeper and deeper appreciation for Quite Uptown and onward. All of the emotion of that last bit of the story is so pitch perfect. LMM really found a way to make it one of those situations where there truly is no real villain... just a whole lot of hurt and unfortunate circumstances on all ends.
It's also brilliant to me just how deeply all of them were able to convey all that emotion just through the audio alone! A lot of times with very emotional bits of shows, I find that the recording inevitably comes across a bit flatter than seeing it play out live, but damn, if that's true of this show I can't even imagine what it must be like live! Because they all just sound so freaking SAD and in the moment, and Leslie's voice on the "this man will not make an orphan of my daughter" part especially is just... gutting. But Lin and Phillipa too- they're incredible.
I don't need a life that's normal. That's way too far away. But something next to normal would be okay. Something next to normal is what I'd like to try. Close enough to normal to get by.
I weep pretty much from "Burn" through the end of the show. It's when Eliza brings up the orphanage in the finale that I completely and utterly lose it.
Today I actually listened to the entire recording straight through with no skips or stops and what not and I came to the consensus that satisfied is the greatest song in musical theatre history.
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Call_me_jorge said: "Today I actually listened to the entire recording straight through with no skips or stops and what not and I came to the consensus that satisfied is the greatest song in musical theatre history."
Even hearing "It's Quiet Uptown" twice on the album before the show I was unprepared. Its artistry -- its ability to serve as a lightning rod to grief -- is both obvious and maybe a little mysterious.. I think it cuts so deep because of one phrase: "the unimaginable," which invokes not only pain but a kind of free-floating anxiety, even a terror, that every parent holds in his or her heart. And as to its mystery, the song has a kind of horrible unspoken prescience about it, too, since of course the duel that killed Phillip was only a couple of years before the duel that defines the story. A big case in made in the Chernow book about Hamilton's depression after his son's death; leave it to brilliant musical theater to burrow deep inside it. The show has a headlong power, never stops moving until maybe "Burn," and then as someone else noted above the story is awash in dread and grief. That it's all presented with such genuine emotional truth but without a whiff of sentimentality speaks to its genius.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
I saw it at the Public, and "Room Where it Happens" was THE transformative moment where I knew this had changed from "cool nerdy thing I would love" to "holy crap this is a masterpiece." Burr's become my favorite character (LOJ my favorite performer), so "Wait for It" is my other current favorite.
Also love:
Satisfied, Right Hand Man, Washington on Your Side, My Shot, Nonstop, Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story, and History Has Its Eyes on You.
I first only cried at the end ("the orphanage..." but now about half the album makes me cry!
Washington on Your Side definitely gets my vote for best use of profanity!
What I love about "Say No to This" is its Sam Cook-ness. It has that old fashioned bad boy crooner component, too. It's almost too fast in the theater, the song is so damned good.
But "Non Stop" just pulls me up in my seat. It's a great act closer, and who knew that "...Hamilton wrote fifty-one!" could make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? It's thrilling, and pays off everything in the first act. Wasn't it another brilliant stroke to save a song about the hurricane, a defining event in Hamilton's young life, for act two, to use it with supreme irony, decades later?
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
Seahag, I connected to that line the very first time I heard it, but it took me a long title when to realize what it came from. Then, I felt stupid when I finally figured it out.
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
Serious question: What is so affecting about It's Quiet Uptown? I find it to be insanely expositional and pandering. I now skip it constantly. Is it something about the staging that I need to experience live?