A playwright and a punk transcend their musical milieu
Hamilton: Original Broadway Cast Recording (Atlantic, 2015)
Sigh. Where to start? When this Broadway megahit about a bastard orphan son of a whore who became our first treasury secretary crossed over in 2015, I abstained on the sidelines. I did so because I a) don’t make showtunes part of my auricular diet and b) believe the visual impact of musicals is just as important as the songs and didn’t dare divorce one from the other. When the live staging appeared on Disney+, I made a night of it with my mom (she’d seen the real thing) and enjoyed this messy piece of pop culture for what it is. Those who take umbrage with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s whitewashing of history and Alexander Hamilton’s dealings with slavery have a right to gripe (as Miranda himself agrees). However, there are libraries full of books that give a proper account of the sins born of this nation’s founding — and it serves us well to remember our Black and Brown compatriots who today continue to resist a government shaped in part by a son of a bitch like Thomas Jefferson. I instead wager Miranda’s intended message is the triumph of immigrants who continually enrich a country that despises them, a message that hasn’t dimmed a bit during America’s sinister turn toward fascism. But Hamilton’s political subtext isn’t what has kept this soundtrack on the Billboard charts for more than 250 weeks (and counting). Rather, it’s a musical palette that draws from several genres as American as apple pie. No, this isn’t rap, although it’s certainly imbued with rap sensibilities. And, no, this isn’t pop, although the hooks and melodies are stronger than most of what constitutes Top 40 these days. This is indeed theater music. The singers crisply enunciate every syllable and occasionally flirt with opera-esque recitatives. And while the words keep coming and do a lot of historical and narrative heavy lifting, I’m still taken by the songs that personalize their subject matter. “It’s Quiet Uptown” captures the unspeakable grief of losing a child. “Wait For It” knows death gives life meaning, and the self-worth testament of “My Shot” works for Hamilton, Miranda or Black Lives Matter protesters. Then, just when you could use some more levity, along comes King George. GRADE: A
Green Day – American Idiot (Reprise, 2004)
More than 15 years after Billie Joe Armstrong enacted what would be rock’s final mega-statement, I still don’t hear the political throughline that supposedly made this album (sorry, opera) the career-saver gatekeepers and PR reps sold it as. Sure, the title track is antifa all the way and the anti-war “Holiday” is also anti-Dubya, but those anthems feel like cutaways from the band’s overarching plot about two punks gone mad in an America gone belly up. My rule for these songs is the same as it ever was: Don’t get bogged down in the particulars. Searching for a tidy narrative or a lyrical couplet that sums up their political rage is a futile exercise because Armstrong never put them there. If these songs are supposed to reflect a nation, they miss the mark badly. There’s no mention of race or sex, and their anti-war proclamations lack the specificity a worthy protest anthem craves. What these Berkeley punks pull off, however, is conveying the messiness and fears of growing up. Broken homes, mental illness and drug use undercuts the polished veneer of suburbia, the loves songs burn with a hopeless romanticism befitting of the genre, and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is a stirring ode to Armstrong’s dead father that doubles as remedial education in vulnerable songwriting for all those insufferable emo twerps. Armstrong briefly reinvigorated rock’s dramatic grandiosity and pushed over four million units in the process. Then, when the market dried up, he moved to Broadway. Shameless self-aggrandizing, an American pastime. GRADE: A
Sound 'Round 