Tag: hamilton

caravanslost:

• Or, more accurately, the song where Lin completely changed everyone’s minds about Aaron Burr in three short minutes.

• In the same way that “My Shot” is a perfect exposition of Ham’s character, “Wait For It” is a perfect exposition of Burr. And the two songs are polar opposites in every way. Ham starts “My Shot” with his foot on the gas and pushes down harder, rapping at a hundred words a minute. Burr starts “Wait For It” soberly, accompanied by a simple piano, and he gives a hushed delivery.  Ham starts “My Shot” talking about himself and his strengths and his ambitions, because he’s starting from the bottom and there’s nothing to hold him back. Burr starts “Wait For It” by talking about his secret affair, and his parents’ legacy, and all the external factors that cause him to slow down and take stock.

• This song, by the way, is one of the ensemble’s greatest contributions to the album. In the first half of the song, they repeat a few words very quietly behind Burr (“preacher, preacher, preacher”; “teach ya, teach ya, teach ya”, etc). The quiet repetition of the final words of each line makes the song feel like an echo chamber. It’s like you’re inside Burr’s head. Which you kind of are, I guess.

• “Love doesn’t discriminate / between the sinners and the saints / it takes and it takes and it takes / and we keep loving anyway / we laugh and we cry and we break and we make our mistakes.”

• And then, goddamn, the song hits 1:30, and Burr finally howls, and it gives me life.

• “I AM THE ONE THING IN LIFE I CAN CONTROL / I AM INIMITABLE / I AM AN ORIGINAL.”

• It works because Burr’s hesitation is more immediately relatable that Ham’s ambition. I can’t speak for y’all, but “I’m not falling behind or running late. I’m not standing still, I am lying in wait” speaks to me much more personally than “I’m young, scrappy and hungry and I’m not throwing away my shot.”

• But then! As soon Burr explodes, he reins it all back in again. The instrumentation dies down, the ensemble goes quiet, and we’re left with Burr and a piano, and “Hamilton doesn’t hesitate, he exhibits no restraint …”

• “Then goddamn it I’m willing to wait for it …”

• The way the song just explodes at 2:40 has got to be one of the most beautiful, life-affirming musical moments ever committed to record.

• But again! Just as Burr has let loose, he freezes the action and the song finishes off quietly. And it is so important that the song finishes off quietly. If Hamilton was singing it, this song would build, explode, block out the sun momentarily, trigger Armageddon, and then it would end. Think back to the way My Shot ends, with “RISE UP!” and “WOAH, WOAH WOAAAAH!”s and “TIME TO TAKE A SHOT”, and twenty different others layers falling over each other, scrambling to be heard. But Burr’s singing. So it goes out with a whisper.

• So, tl;dr, you know how in Kingsman, Harry Hart says that a story is only as good as its villain? One of the reasons why Hamilton is a masterpiece is because Burr is characterized so well. 

• And it’s all done in the space of this one haunting, achingly beautiful song.

luminoussbeings:

• People will always be critical, they’ll make the personal political, they’ll try to knock you off your pedestal, your pinnacle, let other people be cynical, let it go
• And a million years ago she said to me ‘this one’s mine’…so I stood by, do you know why? I love my sister more than anything in this life, I will choose her happiness over mine everytime
• You don’t have to bring a gun to a knife fight
• We bleed and fight for you; sometimes it seems that’s all we do
• My last thought is of Eliza; maybe I can get back home before she opens her eyes. They put us through our paces, we count to ten, God, I can’t wait to see her again
• But upstate you’re the rascal who trades away the capital- the asshole who taxes the a-a-alcohol
• PAY YOUR FUCKING TAXES