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.