I enjoy musicals. I’ve been involved with multiple theatrical productions growing up (in and out of school) and have been involved with choir my entire school life (minus undergraduate and graduate school). I just got done watching the musical Hamilton. Was it enjoyable? Yes. Was it a fresh take on history? Yes. However, it is in my opinion, very overhyped. I waited until the “first few waves” of people going absolutely nuts over it to watch it, because I did not want to be caught up in the “hype train” everyone was giving it.
Mr. Miranda was inspired to write the musical after finishing an autobiography on Alexander Hamilton and seeing there was no musical about him within the current literature of musicals. Mr. Miranda did “his thing” and boom, we got the Hamilton musical. I am not going to comment on the “race change” of some characters, because I could honestly write a book about that. Rather, I want to give my theory as to why Hamilton shot up to star-status and took mainstream audiences by storm.
Hamilton has enjoyable musical numbers and is overall, a very energetic play. The music is a unique blend of hip hop beats with other musical styles (but it all meshes together well, without anything clashing). However, if you look at the timeline of popular musicals being released on Broadway, we, as a whole, have not had a lot within recent years.
I think both theatrical and the common person were metaphorically starving for another great musical. Due to the fact that it had been a good, long while since people have been starstruck by such a musical, I think that was a huge factor as to why Hamilton became such the success that it was. Hamilton was also such a unique musical in the sense that what other contemporary Broadway musical do you know that actually incorporates hip-hop style beats?
If you absolutely love Hamilton, that is fantastic. As I stated earlier, I enjoyed Hamilton, but I can not help but feel that people pushed it to “God status” with how great it was, acting like “there is no other musical in the world that can even come close to how great this one is”, which is a bit foolish (espicially since everyone has different music tastes).
