Review Summary: We laugh and we cry and we break, and we make our mistakes.
Hamilton is... strange. Hamilton took the world by storm back in 2015 and it's rode a consistent, almost-nonstop wave of popularity in the five-flirting-with-six years since it hit Broadway in the summer. At the time, I was a fan of Hamilton. There was something about its unique musical language and the way that it utilized hip-hop as a storytelling medium that just *worked* for me. I was able to quote Hamilton inside and out, my friends and I would sing its songs together, and - at the time - I couldn't help but agree that Hamilton just kind of... *got it*. It captivated and connected with a casual, non-theater audience in the way that Broadway simply *couldn't*, not with its usual lineup of made-up, whitewashed worlds that only the very wealthy could ever see, let alone relate to. Hamilton was a big Broadway musical tailor-made for the people that could never see it on stage, and I was wholeheartedly on board for the ride.
...But that was five years ago. And looking back at it now, Hamilton is... strange. For all of its subversion of cultural norms and all of the exposure and opportunity it gave to POC actors/singers in general... Hamilton is also a strident, propagandistic glorification of terrible people and a terrible age. That's such an utterly *strange* middle ground for Hamilton to coexist in - it is simultaneously woke and simultaneously tone-deaf as f*ck. Its' reclamation of historical figures is so wildly hit-or-miss that if you actually look at the show without any nostalgia or rose-tinted glasses of any kind, then Hamilton's a story full of absolute whiplash. For a story that claims to paint a flawed, multifaceted portrait of Old America in all of its blind, bygone glory, the whole story sure kinda reeks of founding-father worship.
As a narrative, Hamilton has not aged well. It portrays Thomas Jefferson as venal and silly and played for too much comedy to ever come across as a genuine threat instead of the dark, f*cked-up man that he doubtlessly was, it weirdly tries to convince the audience that Hamilton was an abolitionist when in actuality his attitude on slavery was "ambiguous", and it never once paints George Washington in any light other than the best possible one. The only character that really works is Aaron Burr, and his complex, intricate character
does expertly toe the line between sympathy and antagony, presenting him as flawed without aggrandizing him or the things he'd done. But pretty much every character feels
off to at least some degree, and this fundamentally, critically wounds Hamilton's snake-oily narrative in a way that a more negative, biting, deconstructive take on the same story simply wouldn't have.
But that is a very interesting discussion for another time - there are songs in Hamilton, after all, quite a number of songs. Perhaps Hamilton's flaws as a narrative could be saved by its music, but Hamilton's tracks are... hit-or-miss. Perhaps the songs are best enjoyed with the context and energy of the actual show, but Hamilton is a sung-through opera, and thus the songs should be as satisfying as the story they're telling, able to stand on their own removed from the visual medium through which they're sung. The opening title track is viscerally corny and self-satisfactory, with practically every line of the song painting Hamilton as this tragic Shakespearean Gary Stu and introducing its principal cast as either the awesome best friends of Hamilton or the bastards that tried to do him dirty. "Alexander Hamilton" has some of the absolute best instrumentation on the album - growing from sparse, empty instrumentation into a swelling, dramatic orchestral soundscape - but it never manages to get over the blemish of its frankly c*ck-sucky lyrics.
Some of the low points on this record are actually terrible. "What'd I Miss?" is a swinging, bluesy trash number that compels the audience to f*cking clap and laugh along to lines like "Lookin' at the rolling fields, I can't believe that we are free!" instead of wince in disbelief, "Story of Tonight" is a strong contender for the corniest song of all time with its 'inspirational' blend of piano and strings and the breathy, soft choir in the background, "The Schuyler Sisters" is this baffling, Disney-esque number with an annoying "work, work" hook that refuses to go away and a tone-deaf, fake-feminist attitude that puts a damper on the stellar harmonies and chemistry shared between the three women singing at the forefront, and songs like both the overlong "Take A Break" and the overly-
short "Adams Administration" are skippable, borderline-filler nonsense. Both Act I and Act II end on pretty weak notes as well - "Non-Stop" is a limp, indecisive song that rapidly fluctuates between dancehall beats, piano balladry, and rhythmic string sections at sporadic intervals, only finding something that works at the very end of it all, and "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story" is teeth-rottingly overwrought and full of eye-rolling, gag-inducing trite like the entire company singing "
the ooorphanaaaage" in the softest possible tone.
It's not all bad - in fact, there's quite a few things that do work about Hamilton, especially on a performance level. Hamilton is full of talented actors and singers, and luckily it's smart enough to give them quite a bit of a workout throughout the musical's runtime. "Satisfied" is one of the sickest songs on the soundtrack, the electronic drums and lush synths, strings, and harps in the background carrying a strong Destiny's Child sound that suits Goldsberry's impeccable flow and control to a T; "You'll Be Back" is an excellent Beatles pastiche whose exuberant, demented energy seeps through the cheery piano, regal harpsichord, and Jonathan Groff's unhinged, bright-faced delivery of lines like "No, don't change the subject, 'cuz you're my favorite subject!"; and "One Last Time" is given an appropriate amount of soaring, rich gravitas by Christopher Jackson's controlled, emotive belting throughout. Once again, the standout is Aaron Burr - it's little wonder Leslie Odom, Jr. won the Tony that year. "Wait For It" is an exceptional song, a sobering, deeply-introspective solo number that marries a heavily-processed piano and a dancehall beat with dream-pop synths and samples that add a ton of color to Odom Jr.'s rich, velvet-soft voice, and "The Room Where It Happens" is by far and away the showstopper highlight of Hamilton's entire setlist, with metallic drums, bluesy piano, minstrel-like banjo, and jazzy, sinister basslines gradually evolving into an explosive, growling villain song burning with slithery aggression, Odom Jr. descending from controlled and precise melody into full-out, uncontrollable belting and ad-libbing. Its off-kilter, chameleonic nature breaks the mold of an already-experimental musical and transforms into something utterly unique, and for five delicious minutes, Hamilton is utterly perfect.
There's even a handful of tracks on Hamilton that work much better than they should. "It's Quiet Uptown" would be utterly corny and overwrought nonsense... were it not for the quiet, lingering orchestration, textured chords, its unexpected major key (something usually reserved for happier tunes), and the evocative, harrowing performances of every singer involved (Miranda's best performance on the record). "Dear Theodosia" is the kind of cheesy sentimentality that actually works pretty well, sounding like a blend between the acoustics of "Hey There Delilah" and a piano rendition of "Chasing Cars", "Farmer Refuted" has some genuinely sick, point-counterpoint vocal interplay and manages to work well with both a formal, old-fashioned classical tune and a decidedly un-hiphop time signature of 3/4, as does the darker "Your Obedient Servant", a slick and deeply-unsettling Eleventh Hour song where you can feel the acerbic vitriol between Burr and Hamilton dripping off of every single line, its caustic nature only emphasized by its intriguing blend of tremolo strings, waltzy staccato piano, and held electric piano embellishments - the intensity of the situation can be felt through the song threatening to burst into violence at almost any moment.
But Hamilton's lows are too pronounced for Hamilton's highs to really save it. For one thing, Hamilton is just too
problematic to fully enjoy it - even superficially enjoyable songs, like Alexander Hamilton's heavy, reverberated solo number "Hurricane" and the fun, multiplayer hip-hop present in "My Shot", are often ruined by the context of its lyrical content and the heroic glorification of its
very real, very dead, and very sh*tty characters, and that's not even getting into some of the truly-absurd, delusional sh*t Hamilton tries to pull, like the corny, goofy Cabinet Battles and the insane usage of autotune on "The Reynolds Pamphlet" ruining what should be the story's darkest hour to the point where it feels like self-parody. This is a (mostly) satisfying story, but this is not a satisfying piece of
historical fiction - Hamilton didn't need to be a documentary, but it also didn't need to be this strange, confused piece of intentional-unintentional patriotism. And even without Hamilton's "political" problems and tendency to twist the vestiges of historical accuracy casting a pall over the whole project, it's not exactly a great musical on its own - motifs are well-utilized, sure, and
some of its lyrics and storytelling moments are genuinely brilliant, but there are better musicals out there. A lot of these songs just feel weak on their own, like the Broadway format and the need for a live orchestra's holding these tracks back from everything they could be.
Hamilton isn't peak Broadway, and it
certainly isn't peak hip-hop. Some of Hamilton's triumphs are genuinely great - when it's firing on all cylinders, you almost start to buy into the hype behind Hamilton and lose yourself in its high-energy bombast ... but its grave missteps as a story, musical, and political statement reel you back in and force you to face the flawed reality of its existence. Frankly? It's got a lot of brains but no polish, and that's that.
