Rap In Musicals, Part II: How Hamilton Fixed Literally Everything

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.

The Discerning Lyricist Guide to Musicals: Chess

The Discerning Lyricist has moved! Look for us here to get the latest posts and essays!

The Discerning Lyricist 150th Post: The Order of Things From Here

Hullo!

You know, I glanced over some of my earliest posts the other day, and found myself simultaneously repulsed and inspired - repulsed that I once thought this rubbish publishable, and inspired that I have improved both as a writer and a reader to the point where I can recognize and reject at least some of my own rubbish when I see it.

I started this blog as an outlet for my thoughts on musicals, which I ran out of in short order to a degree that came as a surprise to absolutely no one but me. My long hiatus corresponded with the period in which I finished and graduated college, and following that I briefly repurposed this as a personal blog that could serve as an online home for all of my casual, multi-topic rambles.

Given the insidious mission creep of late, I thought this milestone might present an opportunity to re-focus my efforts on this blog and delegate some of my other efforts. Henceforth, this shall be the way of things:

• The Discerning Lyricist blog will house all of my articles and essays on music and the musical theatre, as well as any original songs I write and all of my (one hopes) world-famous limerick reviews.
• Cinemibus (https://cinemibus.wordpress.com/), my newer blog, will house the Cinemibus webseries, the Cinemibus Podcast, and any essays I might do on non-musical topics, particularly film analysis.
• As ever, you can find my Talking Picture and original song videos on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/user/Cinemibus/videos and my Cinemibus webseries and Discerning Lyricist videos on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/user38920965.

To those of you who read the blog, be you regular or freshly-arrived, thank you. I can promise you the work will only get better from here.

Cheers,

A. Stefan Melnyk

A Preview Of My Scheduled Video Content This Month

Cinemibus: Episode 1, I Love The Cabin In The Woods from Cinemibus on Vimeo.

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!