Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.36

My Shot
Lin Manuel Miranda

New and Old
Strained
Stretched to the edge
If I could be this clever
Maybe it took him years to write
A permanent wall of careful pieces
A stylistic mix of
Self-aggrandizing
and
Monomania
Worth forgiving
Worth loving

Lyrics
If the only awkward lyric in the whole song is "where I come from, some get half as many [years]" (and this only because of how it sounds), it would still be better than any song I've written, many times over.

1. The words: Not only lyrically, because let's be honest, a five minute song of minimal repetition is already something astonishing, but Miranda made a story told narratively, told cohesively, told artistically. It's exceedingly clever. There are twists of phrase and rhyme that catch me new every time I listen to the song. To hold both cleverness and functionality in the hand and not let either overpower the other is a task I have never even attempted. I can't imagine the time it must have taken to refine the bespoke idiocies from the first dozen drafts of this song.

2. The music: Not just catchy, it's also beautiful and soaring and inspirational. It's an anthem in the middle of a predominantly-rapped narrative. It's a song of height and size, aided by a choir in just the right places singing just the right pounding and insistent reply to the melody. It's an orchestral composition that only serves to augment the lyrics and the singer without ever detracting or distracting.

3. The consistency: I've written two funny and one lovely song for camp. I admit I am not a practiced poet/lyricist, nor an accomplished composer, nor knowledgeable in any aspect of writing songs, in fact. I've written three songs over the course of two years (give or take) and each time I wrote my mediocre garbage, it was a one-off. I worked for three days, putting nearly all my effort into writing the last one, and I crapped it out in a way that was acceptable, using a deeply flawed system that is irreproducible. Lin Manuel Miranda wrote an entire musical, and there isn't a bummer on the setlist. My Shot might not even be the best/most artistically relevant/most cohesive song in the play.

Essentially, this song is close enough to the sorts of things I want to do (I've been kicking around the idea of writing a musical for camp for a while now) that it just scares me how good Miranda is at it.

Stephen
He did a decent job with the history, as far as my sister and Ashley McMullen have said. Both of them are highly intelligent, have read multiple books about early American history, and have seen the play live, so I trust them. Enough.
But, like you said, he could have botched the history dramatically and still have a banger. My Shot is just a very good song, and, for a lot of reasons, it makes me sad and tired.