There’s no business like… Show Tunes Review Week business

One of the Earn This posts I’ve most enjoyed writing over the past couple years is “Fulfilling My Hamiltonian Destiny,” an account of my long and complicated relationship with the smash musical Hamilton.

In the year or so after I saw Hamilton on Broadway in January 2017, I listened to the soundtrack dozens of times. The soundtrack is really an astonishing collection of riches, filled with great tunes and character moments and wordplay that falls together into something special.

There are a lot of peaks. It’s tough to top “Wait For It,” which transforms Aaron Burr from the story’s villain to its reluctant hero. The sheer energy of “My Shot” is remarkable, even for Broadway.

But there’s only one song on the Hamilton soundtrack that has ever reduced me to a puddle of emotional tears. You see, I had my baby daughter in mid 2017. When she was a month or two old, I was driving home from work, sleep deprived and exhausted. I was listening to the Hamilton soundtrack.

“Dear Theodosia” came on. I immediately start choking up. I really was not in a stable enough condition to handle the theme of new fatherhood. Then the second verse kicked in, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton half-whispers his new baby, marveling at the startling, earth-shaking, indescribable truth of the existence of his child. His child.

And it broke me, man. Tears down my cheeks. I believed the emotion of the song because I felt it myself.

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