Thematic Listening Orders

[jjhunter]

Has anyone else found themself skipping around the cast album thematically?

After listening all the way through in order a few times, I found myself doing this to try to pinpoint repeating musical motifs / linked phases, and I keep discovering nuances I might have missed otherwise.

For example:

"The Election Of 1800" -> "Washington On Your Side" --> "Meet Me Inside"

brings out more than the wonderful buildup lyrically of 'inside' / 'your side' (or the flip side Burr experiences of constantly being on the outside, without side); it also unpacks (at least for me) more of the emotional weight of the history behind Alexander choosing as he did, and the cost he paid again and again for choosing sides, for building & exercising his public reputation as he did.

Some other sequences I've found particularly revealing:

• "The Schyuler Sisters" -> "Say No To This" -> "Satisfied" -> "Burn"
• "Farmer Refuted" -> "Non-Stop" -> "Cabinet Battle #2"
• "Take A Break" -> "It's Quiet Uptown"
• "Dear Theodosia" -> "My Shot" -> "Blow Us All Away"

Are there any out-of-order thematic sequences you've been listening to? Has listening that way changed your experience of the songs in question &/or what aspects of them jump out at you?

Comments

[rymenhild]

I listen to the songs in order, but I do hear them echoing in each other. The connection that always gets me is in "Non-Stop":

Hamilton to Burr: "What are you waiting for? / What do you stall for? / We won the war, / what was it all for?"

Which Lin-Manuel Miranda rhymes, because he is Lin-Manuel Miranda and he can do that, with "Aaron Burr, Sir" and "Room Where It Happens":

Laurens: "Burr, the Revolution's imminent. What do you stall for?"
Hamilton: "If you stand for nothing, Burr, what do you fall for?"

and

"What do you want, Burr? What do you want, Burr? If you stand for nothing, Burr, what do you fall for?"

Hamilton doesn't even need to ask, "What do you fall for?" in "Non-Stop," because that line is RIGHT THERE ECHOING UNDER THE RHYME and you can hear it.

[cahn]

Holy crap, I didn't even realize the words "What do you fall for" aren't technically in "Non-Stop" until reading your comment, because like you said it is so RIGHT THERE! Wow.

[isis]

A few things I've noticed in order but not sequential:

In "That Would Be Enough" Eliza sings: "let me be part of the narrative"
Then in "Burn": "I'm erasing myself from the narrative"
And in "Who Lives Who Dies:" "I put myself back in the narrative"

And in a more thematic/musical sense, I get a shiver over the foreshadowing of Philip's counting in French in "Take a Break" (a song I otherwise don't like much) echoing the count in "Ten Duel Commandments", not just in the sense of counting but in the music. It's the same rising scale - not the melody he sings but the lead-in melody in the background. All the duel songs have this.

And I know it's obvious, but I love that all three of King George's songs are the same melody, just with different words.

[cahn]

"That Would Be Enough" -> "It's Quiet Uptown." AGH. Way to take my heart and STOMP on it, LMM!

"And if this child
Shares a fraction of your smile
Or a fragment of your mind, look out world!
That would be enough"

"If I could spare his life
If I could trade his life for mine
He’d be standing here right now
And you would smile, and that would be enough"

But I'm not afraid... I know who I married... AGH.

[isis]

This bit gets me too, which is why I don't listen to "It's Quiet Uptown" very often. It's a great song, but WAAAAH.