The Discerning Lyricist has moved! Look for us here to get the latest posts and essays! A little over a year ago, I wrote an article called "Rap In Musicals, And How We've Been Getting It Wrong." In it, I made two major arguments: one, that rap was as well-suited to musicals as pen to page, and two, that most uses of rap in the musical theatre thus far had largely failed to realize the extraordinary synergistic potential of these two forms. I then went on to list techniques in the musical theatre that rap would complement perfectly. I could reiterate all of my points here, but I no longer have to. I can now just point to Hamilton and say, "yeah, basically that." Nonetheless, let's briefly run through these ideas and examine them in the context of Broadway's latest runaway smash.
I am in the process of migrating my more intensive webseries, Cinemibus, onto Vimeo. This is largely because the YouTube content ID system is more trouble than it is worth, and I would just as soon do without the hassle. I have reposted my first episode of the series on that platform and embedded it above. All episodes of Cinemibus from here on out will be hosted on Vimeo, and I would like to preview those episodes, as well as the first episode of a new series, that are coming up this month! On Thursday, April 9th, the second episode of Cinemibus will be posted. This one focuses on Iron Man 3 and focuses on the theme of superficiality. And I promise it is nowhere near as boring as I have just made that sound. On Thursday, April 16th, I will be starting The Discerning Lyricist webseries, with a first episode discussing the awesomeness that is the musical Chess. On Thursday, April 23rd, Cinemibus will be celebrating the impending arrival of a new Avengers movie with a look back at the old Avengers movie. This first part will be an in-depth look at the storytelling challenges the movie faced and what it did to overcome those challenges. On Thursday, April 30th, I will release part 2 of the Avengers retrospective, this one focusing on the narrative problems that afflicted the first Avengers movie and how the sequel might improve on those elements. Hope to see you there!
