Notes

Hamilton Pun: Part 1 of a 5-ish Part Series About Everyone’s Favorite Musical
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I’ve been meaning to blog about Hamilton for a long time. Because it might attract more readers, cynical person? Hush, you! Actually it’s because it might just be the only perfect piece of art I’ve ever encountered. The Godfather has an obvious missed punch. The Sopranos had that weird freeze-frame and an overlong episode about Christopher Columbus. Hamilton’s “worst” moment would be the highlight of most other Broadway shows.
I’ve actually tried blogging about this before, but I find myself meandering through too many things I’d like to say. Let me rephrase: I find myself meandering more through too many things I’d like to say than I usually do on this ponderous blog. SO I’ve decided to blog about it the only way I know how: song by song. There are 46 songs. Hence why I’m breaking it into as many pieces as Robert Rodriguez’s planned double trilogy of “Mexico” movies.
“What’s your name, man?”
Honestly, I could write an entire five-part series just about this opening song. DO NOT TEMPT ME. The job of an opening number in a musical is usually to be a faux show-stopper (a full show-stopper when the show just done started would be silly) and to set the tone for what you can expect from the show. Hamilton has a tall order for an opening song, because if you can remember a time before everyone in America started quoting the thing thrice daily: there was a time when the play seemed absurd. The song needs to stay true to its “Hip-Hopera” style while still sounding vaguely enough like a reggo Broadway song to not force the senior citizens at matinee to re-wrap their candy and catch the early Megabus home.
It’s important to note when reading these entries that my personal interpretation of the play is that it’s Aaron Burr re-telling the story as he’s forced to re-live it over and over again. This doesn’t quite track for the whole thing (although I do think it tracks that all of the characters are reliving the events with knowledge past when they were happening. Given their obsession with how they appear in the narrative, how history will view them, etc.) but Burr is my fave character, to the surprise of no one who’s met me.
Burr himself starts us off with words that are meant to describe Hamilton (no italics, just the man) in ways where we can easily discern how far he’s come. However, there are also a lot of insults in there. The very first time we hear the titular character referenced in his own play he’s called a “bastard.” My other favorite dual descriptor is of Hamilton as the “10 Dollar Founding Father without a father.” That’s a great moniker and great wordplay but also: if I called something a “10 dollar” whatever, that’d be an insult. “Look at that guy in the 10 dollar suit, come on!” Unless you’re referring to an especially fresh-making roll of Mentos, ten dollars ain’t worth much. In this instance, it’s referring to Hamilton’s presence on the 10 dollar bill (obviously). It’s twofold praise though: he was monetarily immortalized on a bill that’s not particularly useful (it doesn’t have the power of a 20 or the flexibility of the 5 and 1) and he started out as nothing. In Burr’s opinion, he never stopped being less than he promoted himself to be.
The opening number (called Alexander Hamilton, forgot to mention that) also gives us our introduction to the main cast, one at a time. Some of these characters we won’t even meet until the second half of the play, but here they are: telling you why you should care about what you’re about to see. And doing so by attaching an earworm to a hook and Khan-ecting it to your brain.
The final bit of cleverness (well the final bit I’ll mention anyway) regarding the opening number is that it informs us (in a way that’s not apparent the first time, but all the more brilliantly on the 2nd+ time) that many actors within the narrative play two roles. SPOILER ALERT the actor who plays Laurens/Philip say they died for him and both characters do. All the ladies love him. And then there’s that DAMN FOOL THAT SHOT HIM.
“You punched the bursar.”
I didn’t include the whole quote from Aaron Burr, Sir because if you haven’t listened to it yet then why are we even speaking, go do so now and come back. This is the quote that pulled me in, because anybody can have a great opening number (even one so great as this show has) but it was at this particularly inspired bit of wordplay that I knew the show was going to be something special.
The entire song sets up these characters, and their conflict, so well. Burr’s dislike of Hamilton, which eventually led to Hamilton’s death, started here. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the cited reason for their duel was why they dueled. No. It started here: the first of a thousand cuts.
Notice the way in which Hamilton approaches Burr: with…respect? Even the faux respect inherent to the show’s oft-repeated phrasing of calling Burr “sir” and every clever thing that rhymes with those two words (General Mercer!) is still more respect than Hamilton gives literally anyone in the show. He gets up in George Washington’s face. He calls John Adams a “fat motherfu**er” (their bleep). He THREATENS TO PUT HIS SHOE UP JEFFERSON’S ASS, IN CONGRESS (the place). This is not a man who particularly cares about pleasantries.
Of course, most of the time when he’s calling Burr “sir” it is as a sleight. But a slighter sleight to be sure. Upon listening to the show more times than I’ve heard the National Anthem, I’ve come to this conclusion: Hamilton genuinely respects Burr. This tracks with Lin-Manuel Miranda stating that they’re two sides of the same coin and that he was originally going to play Burr. He respects him and also, I think, admires his restraint and professionalism. Everyone loved Hamilton for his flowery language but it had to be easier (at times) to live a more constrained life. Sometimes the proper course of action is, indeed, to “wait for it.”
Since the opening number is a kind of teaser for what’s to come, this is the first song in the narrative. And, appropriately enough, it begins with Hamilton and Burr revealing how they’re different. Burr advises to “talk less, smile more” which is essentially 50% the opposite of what Hamilton does for most of the play. Then in a bit of ominous foreshadowing, Laurens and co. arrive just as Burr warns (as influenced by his own philosophy) that “fools who run their mouths off wind up dead.”
The remainder of the number is the first true bit of hip-hop in the show and oh lawd is it spectacular. There’s no analysis here, really. Let’s just take a moment to recognize how perfectly Miranda’s lyrics rhyme French and English together with the intro for my OTHER fave character and the one most deserving of a spinoff: Lafayette. This bit of hip-hop transitions nicely into the second show-stopper of the play (out of three songs thus far) which fuses some Broadway orchestrations with a *fire emoji* beat.
“Enter: me!”
“(He says in parentheses)”
A meta joke in the middle of a hip-hop song in the middle of a Broadway showstopper? Aaron Burr, Sir convinced me this whole show would be great but that line in My Shot is when I IM-ed my Broadway Pusher mother (now a bigger Hamiltonian than I) to say “this is my favorite musical of all time.”
If Aaron Burr, Sir’s low-key catchiness established Burr’s personality of always holding back, My Shot establishes Hamilton’s grandiosity and genius. To this day, I’m still noticing clever bits of rhyming in this jam-packed spectacle. All of this, of course, tempered by the overarching tragedy that he spends the entire play telling the audience he won’t throw away his shot before…well, you know.
I also enjoy the (introduced here and continued often) usage of Hamilton saying he remembers “death so much it feels more like a memory.” I especially like the “seven feet ahead of me?” bit of when death might be awaiting him. See the entry on Genius.com for the myriad of reasons why this is clever, but my personal feeling is that he’s describing a harbinger that’s close but not too close (like in a duel) that is both apropos to how he dies and cleverly antithetical to the fact that in many ways the bullet has been heading for him ever since he said “pardon me” in the second song. Death was always seven feet ahead of him, just not in the way he thought it would be.
This song also marks the first instance of Miranda dropping complex political ideas and/or historical moments within clever rhymes. It showcases how the whole show is essentially pulling a Moulin Rouge! wherein the “show” itself (orators are essentially putting on a show at all times, something I might know a word or two about) has been updated so today’s audience feels the same rush of excitement that the audience of the day would have. In this case: Hamilton arrived soon-to-be-America and started dropping a whole lot of knowledge and speechifying. It’d be crazy boring to actually listen to, at least for a nation that had a hard time making it the whole way through Lincoln. So instead, Miranda shows what rap does best: saying a lot with a lot of littles.
“Tomorrow there’ll be more of us”
The Story of Tonight is a quick, but important, song. I always say with any show/movie that the characters mean a lot more to you if you’ve spent time with them when they’re just chilling. The level of kinship viewers felt with the eponymous friends was so felt because the vast majority of that show was spent in a coffee shop or an apartment. It’s also important to let the audience breathe/let their adrenaline subside after a big number like My Shot. It’s all about pacing, people! You can slightly rearrange seemingly inconsequential scenes in something as big as Saving Private Ryan and it might destroy the entire narrative.
Additionally, this song gives the actors a chance to use their pipes! In a show full of cleverness and layered meanings, there’s something to be said for the occasional song that just means what it means: four friends united in common cause’s camaraderie.
“Burr, you disgust me.”
“Oh, so you’ve discussed me?”
#AndPeggy
The Schuyler Sisters belongs on the radio. It’s catchy as all hell and is as good of a female empowerment narrative as anything else touted as such nowadays. If Beyoncé released a concept album revolving around revolutionary women throughout history and this was one of the songs, that shizz would go platinum.
Of course the lyric I highlighted is from Burr, because even though what he said was the exact type of dick-ish up-pickish line I despise: he was so quick about it! He had that chambered and ready to go. Plus, Burr is my BOI and I gotta give him the benefit of the doubt.
A note, also, for Peggy. Dear, sweet Peggy. Do I love Peggy because Buzzfeed told me that she was the Schuyler sister that I am? Perhaps. But look: she’s the only one offering up an alternative viewpoint! “Bad enough there’ll be violence on our shore.” << While Angelica and Eliza are busy going on about books and ideas and whatever, Peggy be like: what about all the death though???? Note that the actress who plays Peggy ALSO plays Hamilton’s later abhorred paramour Maria Reynolds. Did Peggy just take advantage of the fact that no one ever noticed her and then seduce the love of her sisters’ lives to destroy his reputation? Draw your own conclusions.
In addition to being catchy and forever changing the way you think the word “work” (werk!), this song does a great job of emphasizing the political/social climate of the day. It also introduces us to Alexander’s two great loves: Angelica and Eliza. There are subtle hints in the song about what separates the two women (Angelica is spouting off a bunch of well-read points of view and Eliza is even more in the background/along for the ride than Peggy is).
It’s also the first time we see Burr attempting to be suave and NOT holding back for once. It’s interesting to note that he’s saying a lot of things that Hamilton might say (re: being up on himself, not in reference to money and such because Hamilton had none) but it isn’t received as well. Those dreamy eyes will take someone a long way, it seems. It’s subtle and a very minor part of the song but here again we see Burr doing all of the things that have worked for other men (like Alexander) and having the efforts thrown in his face.
“My dog speaks more eloquently than thee”
Farmer Refuted is the equivalent of a “place-setting” episode of a TV show. It’s just there to set up some major conflicts (THE major conflict of the Revolution) and move the plot along. But, Hamilton being what it is: it contains some A+ simultaneous dialogue that would make any Mumblecore filmmaker envious. You have to look at the lyrics broken down to see how truly great and layered they are, and I swear Genius.com isn’t paying me but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you in that direction.
“I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love!”
You’ll Be Back is the first in the “trilogy” of songs from King George and oh lordy we ARE the ones complaining when it is gone. Miranda shows that he’s not just a one (or two or seven) trick pony by writing a fantastic breakup ballad between England and Soon-To-Be-America. And like all great breakup ballads: you feel a bit for the singer, even as they’re clearly a very abusive half of a relationship.
But seriously: nowadays I find myself wishing that we WOULD get back together with Britain because #politics. Briefest of political rants aside: there’s a reason that Jonathan Groff was nominated for a Tony for what amounts to about six minutes of stage time, maybe seven. Sometimes I just listen to all 3 King George songs because they’re a perfect example of A) a great metaphor choice for a song and B) not overdoing that metaphor. Lesser songwriters would’ve doubled down on sex puns or tried to sneak in more jokes. Instead, there’s a very genuine sincerity to the song. King George legitimately seems hurt that the colonies are abandoning him. He dresses it up in regality and pretending like he doesn’t care, but he’s crying in the rain.
“Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder.”
I hope you were ready for another show-stopper because the show just keeps them coming. This song (Right Hand Man) I would add to a lineup of pump-up songs for a game. It’s so kinetic and exciting that it makes battles consisting of two sides standing still while they shoot at each other and misfire 1/2 the time feel like the camera-circling teamup Avengers scene. It’s also our intro to a (modern) major (general) player: George Washington.
This is a good time to point out that the casting in Hamilton is A+ all the way around. Christopher Jackson commands every bit of respect that Washington did in life, even as his opening lines are basically that the rebels are screwed. The characterization of Washington is a good case study for all of the characters within the play and how they’re amalgamations of a very real person and a persona from history. Just prior to Washington’s arrival, the chorus is chanting: “HERE COMES THE GEN-E-RAL!” like an ancient order summoning their fiercest god. When Washington actually shows up, the first thing he says after the chorus (regarding looking for a sidekick) is essentially: “can I have some #realtalk?” King George (of Britain, although Washington could’ve been that if he wished) notes later in the play that “no one else looms quite as large” as Washington. This is an unimaginable burden, especially when “history has its eyes on you.”
The two men who “try out” to be Washington’s Robin are (you guessed it) Burr and Hamilton. Burr, of course, indicates that he really likes how Washington has been holding back and safely firing from a distance. Burr would’ve made an excellent politician in any time within American History, except this one. All politicians have done espoused for decades is “smile more, never let them know what you’re against or what you’re for” but this was a time of innovation. Washington wasn’t looking for a lacky, he was looking for a strategist.
That man was Hamilton, who notes in unison with Aaron Burr (sir) that they “keep meeting.” There’s a delightfully ominous lower pitch to that small bit, reminding us all that the play is one slow-mo journey of a bullet into a ribcage: the inevitable playing itself out as it must.
Washington immediately sees a bit of himself in Hamilton (giggity, say the fanfics) and begins his play-long tradition of offering fatherly advice. Alexander, being the owner of such top-notch items as: a brain, wordplay, and daddy issues, doesn’t care for these tidbits. Well, not at first.
By the end of the song, Washington’s heralded arrival includes: AND HIS RIGHT HAND MAN just as an explosion from the battle functions as a mic drop. Hamilton, as almost always, did not throw away his shot.
“Seated at the right hand of the Father.”
Burr reacts to this turn of events in A Winter’s Ball: a short, but pivotal, song. Whenever Burr is doing his narration thing to the tune of the opening number, he gets a little bit more pissed or fed up with Alexander. This one is particularly important in that it highlights (high-lights!) a key reason why A. Burr hates A. Ham so much.
Essentially, Hamilton is the fortunate son and Burr is the man in the iron mask. Were they born in another time, Burr would’ve been a career politician and Hamilton would’ve been a white rapper on YouTube. Their conflict is emblematic of the two main characters of Amadeus: Mozart, with the God-given talent he takes for granted, and Salieri, who works harder than Mozart ever could but will never be as talented. Salieri sees his plight as a direct punishment from God, especially given Mozart’s lecherous predilections.
Now, this isn’t a direct copy of course (since Burr was banging a married lady and all of these people were really kind of terrible when you get right down to it) but the fact that Burr’s father was an over-the-top preacher and he refers to Washington as being God-like, it is significant. Burr sees himself as someone who observed “the game” and mastered it just as some fast-talking schmuck came along and changed it forever.
Amusingly, this initial hatred (“obnoxious, arrogant bother” is said in a lighthearted way but are not lighthearted words) fades into “THE LADIESSSSSS” which always gives me a good lol. It’s important to remember that though these men were giants of history, they were also like…20? 22? And with all these cannons going BOOM it’s a good time to YOLO with some corset-ed denizens. Each co-lead’s flaw/central issue is nicely alluded to here: with Hamilton saying he basically would be fine hooking up with anyone and Burr getting himself all turnt up by opining the amount of power and respect he held.
Which…feels like a good stopping point. Alexander is about to meet the love of his life (both of them) and we’re also about to get what’s essentially a novella within the play: concerning a woman who was too slick for her own good.
This has been part 1 of my rundown of allllllll of the Hamilton songs. The bullet has been fired from the gun, now all we can do is sing-along before it reaches its destination.

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