Sunday, February 14, 2016
8 Musical Theater Songs to Break Your Heart This Valentine’s Day
Backstage: Love comes and goes, but belting is forever.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, here are eight musical theater songs (in no particular order) that will certainly break your heart in two. These tunes are best enjoyed while treating yourself to tons of chocolate, but can also double as excellent audition songs to flaunt your emotional range!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
These songs are all extremely moving and definitely can break your heart. This probably isn't a surprise to anyone but my favorite on the list has to be Satisfied from Hamilton. When I saw the show over winter break it was one of the numbers that impressed me the most and stayed with me the longest. Angelica Schuyler parallels the previous song Helpless to show how she sacrificed a future with Alexander Hamilton for her sister. This completely shifts the audiences' perspective of the previous song from a happy one to something heartbreaking. The combination of an amazing performance by the actress playing Angelica and the way that Lin-Manuel Miranda has written the lyrics form a magical performance. It's amazing to think how powerful not only Satisfied, but all of these songs all. All of this is thanks to the lyricists, composers, and performers that create music that we can simultaneously love and cry over.
HAMILTON RULES!
Musical theatre is such a special musical genre. Unlike most songs produced for the general public, theatrical songs focus on the words and the story, not just the beat.
The songs on this list are all beautiful. Barbra Streisand always wins in my heart when comparing music. However, I am also a HUGE fan of Renee Elise Goldberry's version of Hamilton. GO CMU ALUM!
Satisfied is such an emotionally charged song that completely shifts the musicals trajectory. Hamilton the musical goes on to prove my point that musical theatre is about the story telling. The amount of words packed into 44 songs is simply mind-blowing. Lin once again has written a musical that will run for years to come.
It's a magical piece of theatre.
The song comes right after Helpless, a song about Angelica just losing Alexander to her sister. It then moved backwards telling the story through her perspective. The choreography and blocking moves backwards as well. From what I hear it is mind-blowing.
When I glanced at the comments before reading this article, I saw Jake's passionate "HAMILTON RULES!" and assumed Burn would be on this list. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Satisfied was being represented instead. While Burn is certainly heartbreaking, Satisfied is absolutely heartwrenching in a totally different way. It directly follows a song full of such happiness and contentment, and truly allows the listener to understand how, for lack of a better word, dissatisfied Angelica was. I was also thrilled to see a song from Chaplin on this list, since no one ever talks about Chaplin. While I'm very happy to see Being Alive on this list, as Company is one of my favorite shows, I would not necessarily categorize it as heartbreaking, especially when compared to other songs from the show. Being Alive is a very hopeful song, when Bobby is finally realizing the purpose of having another person in his life, and recognizing the fact that he wants someone to be with someone.
I'm going really far back with this one but we talked about it in class and I had to read it. Jake is right Hamilton does rule, and satisfied is totally heartbreaking in a non obvious way, which is what makes it even more heart breaking. I think what surprised me about this list is that I knew most of the songs, but also that I felt equally connected to songs I had only heard and songs I had seen performed. I think this is a really great indicator of just beautiful story telling through music. Yes, when you see something put up it is definitely different but if you can see it put up and still feel full when you listen to it that is a great achievement for the song writer. When I saw Hamilton and I watched burn (the most heartbreaking song in the show in my opinion) I didn't cry. The first time I listened to it I cried like a baby. This doesn't mean that putting things on stage is useless if the writing is good, it just means that often really good writing can stand on it's own. I love most of the songs on this list but they are all pretty reserved for when I wants to wallow, and I am gonna keep them there. Also I think its pretty hilarious that no one mentioned how sad it was that someone wrote an article about heartbreak on valentines day. Wherever they are I hope they are healing, and that the all mighty Lin Manuel Miranda has helped them through whatever struggle compelled them to write such a depressing article.
Post a Comment