Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Sunday on the Pod with Casey, Flo, and
Speaker: And Rosa.
Speaker: Welcome back to Sunday on the Pod.
Speaker: Sunday on the Pod is a podcast all about musical theatre.
Speaker: However, this podcast isn't just for performers, but it's for anybody who loves musical theatre.
Speaker: Each episode, we cover musicals that some of you may love, some of you might hate, or maybe you've never heard of them before.
Speaker: Either way, we will be singing and dancing about it.
Speaker: If you don't already know, we pick a musical and we discuss its plot, the show's creators, dissecting specific songs lyrically, musically,
Speaker: delving into any juicy gossip from past present productions, and my personal favourite, putting on our very own casting director hats and choosing a fantasy cast with our magic generator.
Speaker: Woo!
Speaker: So, what are you waiting for?
Speaker: Sit back and enjoy the pod.
Speaker: And just a huge thanks to all our listeners for supporting the show so far.
Speaker: We are currently on a bit of a drive to boost the audience for our little show, and we need your help.
Speaker: All you have to do is after you've enjoyed an episode of Sunday on the Pod is either rate and review us wherever you listen, share us on social media, or just recommend us to your friends and family.
Speaker: These little things go a long way to increasing our listenership and helping the show thrive.
Speaker: Just a reminder as well that we are available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you can find us at Sunday on the Pod on Insta and Twitter and on our Facebook page, Sunday on the Pod.
Speaker: all linked below.
Speaker: So I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath to hear what we're going to be talking about this week and it is drumroll please.
Speaker: Drumroll, drumroll, drumroll, drumroll.
Speaker: Songs for a new world.
Speaker: It almost feels like we have to do like a woo after we announce what the episode's going to be about.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I also feel like I might get a little drum.
Speaker: every time I introduce just have my own little drum roll you never know there could be someone at home right now with a mini drum set every single week they wait they wait till that very moment and then they go woo at the end like us if that's you let us know
Speaker: and we will buy the drums off of you um I am so excited to talk about songs for a new world uh this week actually it feels I feel like I've been coming into a place in my life at the moment where I'm ready for like a you know when you feel like you're ready for a big change I feel like I need to move to Spain and rehaul my life I need to re-paint my bedroom yes that's a flow coming for Casey today because she's a DIY hell
Speaker: I can seriously relate to that though, because I definitely go through stages where I'm like, right, that's it.
Speaker: I'm sick of wearing the color blue.
Speaker: I'm going to start wearing pink and I'll do something really silly and be like, right, that's it.
Speaker: And I feel like I'm starting a new chapter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, are you talking about it like you'll solely wear that color?
Speaker: Like, you know, there's that woman in Brooklyn who only wears green.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I'll make a special effort to wear a particular color.
Speaker: because I believe that it will change my mood.
Speaker: But then after a while, I'm like, well, I might as well just go back to wearing black, because it goes with everything.
Speaker: When I was a teenager, I'd get that feeling, and I'd rearrange my whole bedroom, and I'd be like, this feels so much better.
Speaker: I feel like a DIY goddess.
Speaker: But now that I have my own apartment, and it's kind of like, half the contents of my living room is in my kitchen, half the contents of my bedroom is in the living room.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now I'm just like, I just want to go to sleep.
Speaker: Well, that's the thing is when you're like halfway through redecorating or like rejuvenating your room and then you're like, oh my God, it's actually 10 o'clock and all of my stuff is still on my bed.
Speaker: When you realize how much you have to do to be in bed and like asleep, suddenly it's just hellish.
Speaker: But also how much crap I have as well.
Speaker: Like what, like even just reorganizing my drawers, I'm like, why do I have all this stuff?
Speaker: And it just takes hours.
Speaker: And then people at home are like, it's so easy.
Speaker: And I'm like, sorry, how are you like this?
Speaker: You must be, you must be wired differently because I take hours to sort out anything.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And then also you always keep stuff.
Speaker: You're always like, oh, I really can't throw that out because I'm going to need it someday.
Speaker: And then you do throw something out.
Speaker: You're like, I've never used that.
Speaker: And then like a month later, someone's like, oh, do you actually have like a four headed USB cable?
Speaker: And you're like, oh, I did.
Speaker: And then I changed it out.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: But also even for like auditions, I'm like, I could need that old baseball top.
Speaker: Like I could be seen for an audition for that.
Speaker: And I'm like, no, absolutely not.
Speaker: A League of Their Own, the musical is going to come out.
Speaker: I'm going to need that baseball top.
Speaker: Do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker: It's all making sense.
Speaker: I would love that, by the way.
Speaker: That would be an absolute dream.
Speaker: Yeah, that is like your dream show, Casey.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Although there is, do you know what?
Speaker: Somebody did on ye olde YouTube.
Speaker: There's like an old sample of somebody.
Speaker: I think they've done like two, three songs.
Speaker: It must have just been like a quick little workshop thing or maybe like fans that have tried something out.
Speaker: But there's like three illegal their own musical songs on YouTube and they're quite good.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Oh, that sounds good.
Speaker: Well, maybe like put that out on social media.
Speaker: We'll do like a link and see what people think.
Speaker: That sounds so good.
Speaker: I actually uncovered the other day, me and my cousin slash flatmate.
Speaker: uh yuin were out having drinks in brixton and he was like oh oh we were talking about like how many voice notes that you have on your phone that like are unlabeled so i label all my voice notes because it's just like i have like feedback from uni there i have like songs that i've written i've got like so much stuff mainly like if i've given director's notes or something like i'm i've got it logged yuin has like 300 and none of them are named so he doesn't know what any of them are
Speaker: And I uncovered two songs that I had written that were based on an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Speaker: And it was kind of fun.
Speaker: Like it was, I mean, they were, there was like the first ever songs that I wrote, I think.
Speaker: So like they're, they're shaky.
Speaker: They're shaky.
Speaker: It was kind of like rediscover that.
Speaker: And then like, there was a few bits where I was like, oh, that's actually quite nice.
Speaker: And it was like back when I was still singing as well.
Speaker: So I had recorded the demos.
Speaker: And I was like, oh my God, like check her out.
Speaker: She's singing.
Speaker: I would love to hear these.
Speaker: I feel like we should do like a Rosa episode where it's like, get out all your old voice notes.
Speaker: Make a poll.
Speaker: And if we get, I don't know, a hundred people voting, I'm going to probably wipe that away.
Speaker: Cause that probably probably not the best thing.
Speaker: We'll do it for our a hundredth episode.
Speaker: Maybe I'll, there you go.
Speaker: It'll be a rose.
Speaker: I get all my old, old bad songs.
Speaker: I'll tell you what though, I didn't really listen to the whole album of this until you suggested doing it.
Speaker: Because I know a couple of the solo songs from Songs From New World, but I'd never listened to the whole album all together.
Speaker: It's all making sense now.
Speaker: It's all making sense.
Speaker: And also people's audition pieces, they're like, it's a song from a new world.
Speaker: I was like, oh my God, that's that song that that person sang however many years ago.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's one of those shows as well that's kind of popular but within musical theatre circles.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: I feel like a lot of other people know in mainstream culture, they know the last five years, they know other Jason Robert Brown shows, but when you're like, oh, Songs for a New World, it's one of those things that's like, unless you're in the know, in the industry.
Speaker: Unless you're VIP, you'd have no idea.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: VIP.
Speaker: But it is.
Speaker: It's a really good show, actually.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Like I was, I got the idea to cover it for an episode because like I had just listened to musicals all day while I'm at the office just because I can't be alone with my own thoughts.
Speaker: And I always like pick like a new, like one every day to just like run down the full gamut of.
Speaker: And I picked this and I was the same as you as like I had listened to, I would say the majority of it just as like standalone songs, but I purposely listened to it from start to finish.
Speaker: And it was really interesting for reasons I'll go into later about how like all the songs connect and how it's actually quite important to hear it like in sequence.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What about you, Case?
Speaker: What were your thoughts?
Speaker: Because you were kind of unfamiliar as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I was kind of in the same boat as Flo.
Speaker: I'd heard a couple of the songs and kind of... We'd sang a couple at college, actually.
Speaker: And then I was like, oh, I didn't realise I was from that.
Speaker: And it was kind of one of those situations.
Speaker: But I don't know.
Speaker: I never really gelled with it completely.
Speaker: Apart from a couple of the songs, which I will go into later.
Speaker: Yeah, I think for me, I love a good through line.
Speaker: After listening to it for this, I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker: I can see the connection.
Speaker: If it was me, I'd like it to be presented in a little bit of a different way.
Speaker: But I'll get into that after you've discussed what a song cycle is and everything.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's obviously the thing, isn't it?
Speaker: It's not the typical musical because it doesn't follow a linear plot and it doesn't follow typical character arcs.
Speaker: So it almost takes a beat to get into that way of thinking, I think, and having to instead listen for story, you're almost listening for theme or you're listening for...
Speaker: like little hints of like more emotional yeah exactly so it's like a different way of listening I think you have to do that's why I think like obviously I've seen a couple of like Amdram performances of it I've never seen it when it's been like staged professionally but I think it's I almost preferred listening to it rather than watching it it that makes more sense to me it feels like you know like an album like I'm trying to think of like an iconic album that like
Speaker: is structured quite well so like maybe the velvet underground's like debut with nico like that is an album that like you are meant to listen to like start to finish it's not just like a collection of random songs it has like a bit of a something behind it do you know what i mean yeah um but anyway let's shall we just bloody well crack on let's bloody well crack on then
Speaker: So Songs for a New World was written and composed by legend of musical theatre Mr Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: It was actually his first ever produced show which really shocked me because I just think you think of Jason Robert Brown as like one of these kind of composers who've been around for so long.
Speaker: He's like such a fixture like he's up there with kind of like Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: He is Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: There's actually two Jason Rock brands you've heard of here first.
Speaker: I think Sondheim or any other musical theater of Giant where you kind of think of him as like just always having been there.
Speaker: But it was his first ever produced show and it was produced in 1995 at the WPA Thieser in New York off Broadway for a limited run of three and a half weeks.
Speaker: and the original cast comprised of Brooke Ashmanskis, Andrea Burns, Jessica Mulaski, which I've always thought was a great name.
Speaker: Jessica Mulaski.
Speaker: Jessica Mulaski.
Speaker: She sounds like a detective or something.
Speaker: And Billy Porter.
Speaker: It also featured Brown on piano, which I think is quite sweet.
Speaker: And it was directed by Daisy Prince, who is the daughter of, of course, the kind of musical theatre and theatre producing giant Harold Prince.
Speaker: Kind of side note, who is your favourite Nepo baby?
Speaker: Oh, that's really interesting.
Speaker: I know, I was just thinking about it when I was like, oh, Daisy Prince, Harold Prince.
Speaker: Oh, there's so many that I think of when you go, oh, they're a Nepo baby and then you're like, oh, but it's okay for them.
Speaker: I'll let them off.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's okay for them.
Speaker: That's always the thing, isn't it?
Speaker: There was a show I recently watched called Daisy Jones and the Six.
Speaker: And the main girl who played the leading singer in that, I think is somehow related to Elvis Presley.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, again, this might be fake news, but I'm pretty sure... Riley Kill?
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: I think that her uncle, or she's somehow related...
Speaker: Oh, she's Priscilla.
Speaker: Oh, she's the grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.
Speaker: So she was she Lisa Marie Presley's daughter.
Speaker: She is the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley.
Speaker: See, well, there you go.
Speaker: And the thing is, though, I didn't put that together.
Speaker: I was like, oh, my God, she has an amazing voice.
Speaker: And then my friend who recommended the show to me was like, well, you know, that's Elvis Presley's, you know, whatever related.
Speaker: I mean, it's just yeah, I mean, and that's kind of one of my favorite ones, I think.
Speaker: Because her voice is incredible.
Speaker: I like the Nepo babies that are like hidden Nepo babies.
Speaker: So like that one, I would never have put that together.
Speaker: But obviously she has, you know, she's getting her like stuff on the door.
Speaker: Because she's... That's true.
Speaker: No, I'm not sure if it's hidden.
Speaker: She might be going into casting rooms and be like, FYI, Elvis was my granddad.
Speaker: But so I can never remember her name because she has a different last name, but Meryl Streep's daughter.
Speaker: She is absolutely mind blowing actress.
Speaker: She is brilliant.
Speaker: And I used to always see her in shows and be like, oh my God, that girl looks so much like Meryl Streep.
Speaker: But she didn't have the same name.
Speaker: So I just never put two together.
Speaker: But it turns out.
Speaker: is her daughter there's two there's Mamie Gummer and then there's Grace Grace Gummer it's Grace Gummer she is phenomenal so I give her a pass I've given her a pass because she's great oh god she does look like her doesn't she look bang on like Meryl Streep it's crazy yeah like a really young Meryl Streep I don't have a problem with Nepo babies if they're talented what annoys me
Speaker: is Nepo babies that get into this, you know, get into the business and get all this fame and fortune when they are subpar performers, actors.
Speaker: I think if you've got the... It's true, though.
Speaker: If you've got the talent, because there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of actors out there that maybe...
Speaker: are being called out for being a Nepo baby but they're actually talented and very established within their own right and that's not to say that they wouldn't have had more advantages but the fact that they're talented also like what do you want them to do?
Speaker: It eases the blow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of like if they're a talented actor they can't just go you know what I think I'll stick to retail because I'll get cancelled.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like it's
Speaker: I think it's fine.
Speaker: I agree with you.
Speaker: I think it's fine if they're quite open about the nepo, like the nepotism.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if they're like, oh yeah, I'm well aware that I, you know, my foot has gotten in the door because of this.
Speaker: But I also think that I work really hard and this is my passion and I give a lot.
Speaker: And there's a lot of nepo babies out there that are like that.
Speaker: That, I'm like, gorgeous, fine.
Speaker: Like, as long as you're recognising.
Speaker: But it's the kind of, I don't want to call her out, but I'm going to call her out, Lily Allens of the world who are like,
Speaker: I've worked my butt off and maybe if other people just worked harder, it's like, right, now you've annoyed me.
Speaker: Now you've just really annoyed me.
Speaker: Like, I think there's a rudeness sometimes that a lot of Nepo babies get.
Speaker: I think if you're gracious about it and you're just like, yeah, also my parent is this person, but I work really hard and I think I'm a good person to work with and I think I bring a lot.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, you do.
Speaker: And I like watching you.
Speaker: I'll tell you what though, speaking of Lily Allen, I went to go see Pillow Man the other day.
Speaker: And I went in with that mindset being like, you know, like, you know, you're a singer, you're an actor.
Speaker: And she was phenomenal.
Speaker: She was absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker: And I remember leaving that being like, my opinions kind of changed of Lily Allen.
Speaker: Like she was really, really good as that part.
Speaker: It's interesting because I've never heard of that phrase, Nepo baby before.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah, I've never heard of it.
Speaker: I also would like to say, I think Lily Allen is very talented.
Speaker: My issue is not with her talent.
Speaker: My issue is with her attitude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's sort of attitude.
Speaker: It's the sort of, it's the sort of like, it's the Molly May mindset of we've all got the same 24 hours in a day.
Speaker: Like.
Speaker: You're being paid millions per hour.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My 24 hours is a bit different.
Speaker: Yeah, I think maybe the most I make in 24 hours is maybe like 50 quid.
Speaker: I think you probably make that like in a second, like the moment you wake up, you probably make 50 quid.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I was gonna say, with the Molly May thing, I'd love to see a rundown of her day.
Speaker: You give me a rundown of what she's doing.
Speaker: Well, she does have her own YouTube channel.
Speaker: If you want to follow along for a day in the life, then you can see it all there.
Speaker: I would love to see like what she is like.
Speaker: I want to see her in the office at nine to five looking at spreadsheets.
Speaker: Like that's what I want her to do.
Speaker: I want to see like the real life of Molly May.
Speaker: Like what, like what, what are you actually like?
Speaker: And it's really annoying as well because I feel like... I mean, she is quite young.
Speaker: And that was like last year when she said that, wasn't it?
Speaker: And everyone was kind of up in arms of, oh, she's young, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: But I think it's just sort of a thing of coming from a place of privilege, she can't actually...
Speaker: Because, for example, like during lockdown, I was so bored that I would just get on my phone and start making TikToks.
Speaker: And they became really popular at one point.
Speaker: And I was having loads of fun doing them.
Speaker: And I had like, I was getting like hundreds of thousands of views from these TikToks.
Speaker: As soon as I went back to work, did I make one single TikTok?
Speaker: No, absolutely not.
Speaker: Bring that back, Casey.
Speaker: I will.
Speaker: You could be like the Molly Mae who's grounded.
Speaker: yeah I always forget that you were a star on TikTok at some point like you actually were it was it was quite weird I had fans and everything it was really strange I was like no I did I'd literally log on to TikTok and there'd be like a group of like a group of fans who like changed the profile picture to a picture of me and I was like I was like sat in my box bedroom like this is a bit strange but um
Speaker: Yeah, there was the whole point that I was trying to make was like when I was just messing about with social media.
Speaker: Yes, I had a lot of time and a lot of creativity and stuff to do.
Speaker: But as soon as I had to start like big girl job, that all went out the window.
Speaker: So it's all very well and well and nice to be doing a little social media things.
Speaker: I mean, saying this, she has done very, very well.
Speaker: You can't knock it for that.
Speaker: She's done incredibly well coming out of Love Island and then landing all those deals because not everyone off Love Island gets as many deals as she has.
Speaker: She was very smart.
Speaker: I also think she had a very smart marketing team behind her as well.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, Molly Mae itself is the brand.
Speaker: So yeah, definitely.
Speaker: I think a lot of the work is like down to them and she had a good agent clearly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it, it does annoy me when she, like the reason for that success in the first place is because she got through a casting thing on Love Island, which is fantastic.
Speaker: I'm not saying that that belittles any of the work, but,
Speaker: it would like, I think she sometimes equates that with like, if that was removed, she wouldn't be where she is just now.
Speaker: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker: Like that was the inciting incident.
Speaker: I just have an issue with Love Island in general.
Speaker: Like every year when it comes out and everyone kind of like panders to it, I'm just kind of like, it feels very dated to me in the sense of like, if you're skinny and blonde and beautiful, you know,
Speaker: you're going to be famous.
Speaker: And it's kind of like all these people that look exactly the same, just kind of vying for each other's affection, and it's all very...
Speaker: as far as very surface level, and I just feel very like... That sadly, I think, is the real world now, though.
Speaker: A lot of the real world is that.
Speaker: Like, dating, for example, is very much that.
Speaker: Whereas probably, like, back in the day, you'd walk down the street and go like, oh, they look like a nice person.
Speaker: I'll go and say hello and compliment them on their jacket.
Speaker: Or, I don't know.
Speaker: How many people flirted back in the day?
Speaker: It's a very lovely jacket.
Speaker: LAUGHTER
Speaker: Flo was dating in the 1800s.
Speaker: But yeah, that sadly is definitely our society today.
Speaker: People like to say it's not based on all that surface stuff, but it sadly is.
Speaker: Not to say the whole world is like that, but... I would love the next season of Bridgerton that, like, Eloise just goes up to someone.
Speaker: She's like, love the jacket.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: That's very dashing.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: It's very dashing.
Speaker: They'll be like, wow, she really likes it.
Speaker: Well, Daisy Prince, Neppo Baby or not, she was doing an off-Broadway show.
Speaker: And that off-Broadway show, Songs for a New World.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: I'm bringing it back.
Speaker: So, all of the original stars would go on to become...
Speaker: highly regarded and have prominent careers in theatre, film and television, with, of course, Billy Porter going on to have massive celebrity status.
Speaker: The show was then picked up by New Line Theatre in St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: St.
Speaker: Louis?
Speaker: I feel like we've discussed this before.
Speaker: I'm going with St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: Meet me in St.
Speaker: Louis?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It is, although, although in...
Speaker: It actually is St.
Speaker: Louis because there is a quote from me and St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: Oh, I remember this now because you said that they correct them at the end.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: Okay, guys, you probably already know this as well.
Speaker: You probably probably know, guys, it's in episode two.
Speaker: Like, we've already covered this.
Speaker: I know, I need to remember.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: It then premiered in Britain at the Bridewell Theatre in Blackbarrows in a production directed by Clive Paget and it starred Craig Purnell, who played Man One, and he would go on to win a What's On Stage Award for his role.
Speaker: Only seven years later, in 2008, it would then be revived in New York at the Chernokan Theaster.
Speaker: And again in 2015 in St.
Speaker: James's Theaster in Britain with an absolutely incredible cast consisting of the Queen, Cynthia Erivo, Jenna Russell, Damien Humbly and Dean John Wilson.
Speaker: Most recently during the pandemic, The Other Palace actually revived Songs for a New World as a digital production directed by Shami Campbell and starring Rachel Tucker, my favourite.
Speaker: It was filmed with the cast and crew in isolation and it actually used kind of like real life news footage interweaved with the musical numbers.
Speaker: Then it was so popular that it had a two show run at London Palladium in October 2020.
Speaker: and had a West End transfer in February 2021 to the Vaudeville Theatre with Rachel Tucker, Cedric Neal and David Hunter reprising their roles from the Palladium performances.
Speaker: So as you can tell, the show, much like a lot of Jason Reynolds Brown's other work, is hugely popular with the masses and it's actually hugely popular with amdram groups due to its kind of small cast size and band requirements.
Speaker: His shows can often just be staged with just a pianist so it makes money financing it quite easy.
Speaker: So, gals, what is the show about?
Speaker: Well, that is a little bit difficult.
Speaker: Songs for a New World is different to many of the shows that we've already covered, as it doesn't really follow a linear plot.
Speaker: Instead, each actor plays one of four roles, man one, man two, woman one and woman two.
Speaker: These performers keep the same roles, but they do not play the same characters throughout the show.
Speaker: Instead, each song performed by Man One, for example, follows a different character's story or a different set of given circumstances, but they are loosely developed to form one character arc, even if the arc is not specific to One Life Lead.
Speaker: This sounds really complicated, but Scott Miller summarises this really well by saying, it's important to remember that each of the four actors in the show has a kind of overarching character that spans the evening.
Speaker: Not a literal character, as the details vary from song to song, but more of an emotional journey for each actor that progresses from the beginning of the evening to the end.
Speaker: For instance, the woman who sings I'm not afraid of anything is also the woman who gets dumped in the world with dancing, who finds herself pregnant in Christmas lullaby, and who reconciles with her lover in I'd give it all for you.
Speaker: And taken together, these songs chart an emotional journey, this woman growing over the course of the show from innocence to understanding and self-knowledge.
Speaker: The songs which were collated by Jason Robert Brown and Daisy Prince in the original WPA theatre run use songs that he had written for other shows and events and they're connected by one theme which Jason Robert Brown says is the moment of decision.
Speaker: Or you could also say that it follows different characters all on the brink of a new world.
Speaker: Brown has described this as it's about one moment.
Speaker: We will come back to this line later because he uses it often.
Speaker: It's about hitting the wall and having to make a choice or take a stand or turn around and go back.
Speaker: This style of musical thesis can be described as a song cycle.
Speaker: A song cycle in its very basic definition is a collection of full songs that have been designed to be performed in sequence as one complete performance.
Speaker: The reason for them to be performed together in sequence can vary.
Speaker: It may be due to a connecting topic or theme like songs for a new world, or it could be a progression of tonal scheme or musical motif,
Speaker: Or it could even just be the fact it's based on the same source material.
Speaker: So it's based on a collection of poems, for example.
Speaker: So that's why it would go in the order of the poems.
Speaker: Examples of musical theatre song cycles are elegies, which follows the theme of departed friends or fugitive songs, which follows multiple journeys across America.
Speaker: As Songs for a New World was put together from existing numbers written for other performances, some critics have argued that it's not a song cycle, but as it doesn't fit into any other standard definition of musical theater forms, such as a review, most agree that the song cycle is the closest definition that we have for the show.
Speaker: So I'm going to quote Scott Miller again on this, who sums up the show perfectly.
Speaker: He says, one of the characters in Songs for a New World says, I don't want to philosophize, I just want to tell a story.
Speaker: And that line describes Songs for a New World perfectly.
Speaker: In fact, it tells a whole collection of stories.
Speaker: It's not a book musical.
Speaker: There is no overarching plot and no consistent characters throughout the evening.
Speaker: it's a collection of independent scene songs, but it's also more than that.
Speaker: In a 1998 review in St.
Speaker: Louis, Riverfront Times, Mike Isaacson wrote, Songs for a New World is that very rare beast, an abstract musical.
Speaker: There is no specific location other than the natural ambiguity of the human heart and mind, and yet it has a very strong sense of unity about it.
Speaker: Even though many of these songs were actually written for other projects over the span of several years, this show feels like it was planned as a unified whole from the beginning.
Speaker: Which, what a great quote, just as a pause.
Speaker: Imagine someone writing that about you.
Speaker: I mean, massive quote, huge quote.
Speaker: And really, also I think that's, you're right, it sums up the show perfectly.
Speaker: so good yeah i just oh that gives me like shivers actually like jason robert brown must have been because especially because that's from the saint louis um like a review from the saint louis production so when it was still quite new and right the start of his career yeah that was it that must have been so exciting to like to to read the one does someone subscribe to your show is a very rare beast like yeah yeah
Speaker: As the show doesn't really have a plot for us to take you through, I'm just going to quickly cover some of the songs in the show and let you know how they connect back to Jason Robert Brown's theme of the moment of decision.
Speaker: So one of the first songs is called On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1492, which is a very long song title, and it follows a ship captain on a sea voyage to an undiscovered country who is praying for the safety of all his travellers.
Speaker: It's kind of often been thought that it's about Sephardic Jewish people and their expulsion from Spain in the 1400s.
Speaker: We have Stars of the Moon, which is about a rich older woman lamenting on the loves that she threw away in pursuit of a wealthy and rich man.
Speaker: We have The River Won't Flow, which is about two working class men swapping stories on the struggles they face and the bad luck that has met them in their lives.
Speaker: We have I'd Give It All For You, which follows two lovers reuniting after deciding that they need to be together.
Speaker: And one of the last numbers from the show, the flag maker 1775 focuses on a woman sewing a flag whilst her husband and son are fighting the Revolutionary War.
Speaker: So as you can see, these songs cover varying historical events, eras and lived experiences.
Speaker: And there's no linear plot, no characters who appear outside of one song.
Speaker: But the connecting theme is clear.
Speaker: They are all in the precipice of a new decision, a new becoming or a new world.
Speaker: And well, just like that, speaking of the man of the hour, Jason Robert Brown, I thought I'd just talk a little bit about the man himself.
Speaker: If you do not know who Jason Robert Brown is, you now will.
Speaker: So Jason Robert Brown was born in New York City on the 20th of June 1970.
Speaker: He attended Eastman School of Music, later dropping out to move back to New York to pursue his career in the theater.
Speaker: He then worked in New York as a piano player for nightclubs and cabarets until he met Daisy Prince.
Speaker: And I know you at home were like, oh, we've just heard about Daisy Prince.
Speaker: She's back.
Speaker: She's actually a very, very important role in his life.
Speaker: She's the daughter of Hal Prince.
Speaker: And with his songs and her direction, they got together and they wrote his first show, Songs for a New World.
Speaker: And I've actually got a quote.
Speaker: I think it's from a Playbill interview that he did where he said, I asked Daisy Prince if she would help me shape it into a more substantial piece in
Speaker: It was Daisy who really gave me the show, its shape and its arc, for which I am eternally in debt to her.
Speaker: Which I just thought was really lovely.
Speaker: Yeah, really, really lovely.
Speaker: And I don't know, it might just be me, but I feel like Daisy clearly saw something in him at the time and thought, I'm going to give this guy a break and I'm going to kind of help him, you know, start his career.
Speaker: This is what it kind of, this is what it feels like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I wonder how much he took from that as well for his other shows, because the other shows that he's gone on to do, some have been quite abstract as well, but you know, he's done very straight like book musicals as well.
Speaker: So like I wonder how that kind of,
Speaker: having someone kind of like dramaturge it has been like influential and how he's then gone on to write yeah yeah well I mean well there's there's also one of my other favorite quotes from this particular interview he said I didn't ask Daisy to work on the show because she was a woman I asked her because I trusted her and I thought she had wonderful ideas and we've had many glorious collaborations since then
Speaker: which I thought was really lovely.
Speaker: So they must be like BFFs, which is so sweet.
Speaker: I mean, what a best friend to have.
Speaker: Literally the daughter of Hal Prince.
Speaker: So Songs for a New World, as already mentioned, opened in 1995 when he was 25 and it ran for 28 performances.
Speaker: I know, everyone's like, oh God.
Speaker: Yeah, 25 years young.
Speaker: He then wrote the music for Parade, one of my favourite musicals.
Speaker: I mean, that's not important, but I thought it was like, you know, anyway.
Speaker: Directed by Hal Prince.
Speaker: So I love that face.
Speaker: Rosa, what?
Speaker: I know, I didn't realise either.
Speaker: So that was directed by Hal Prince in 1998, winning a Tony for the best original score.
Speaker: It's a gorgeous show.
Speaker: It's a gorgeous, gorgeous show.
Speaker: Incredible show.
Speaker: Incredible show.
Speaker: And I'm sure probably musical theatre kids at home are probably being like, I love Parade, because I feel like everyone always does a song from Parade at some point in their career.
Speaker: Oh, all the girls.
Speaker: I mean, I've done You Don't Know That Man.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You don't know this man.
Speaker: You don't know that man.
Speaker: I like that version though.
Speaker: You don't know that man, actually.
Speaker: He's been following you home all day, but you don't know that man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want to hear that version.
Speaker: Controversial, but I have never seen Parade.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I've never seen it.
Speaker: Actually, no, that's a lie.
Speaker: No, I have seen it.
Speaker: I saw it at a drama school.
Speaker: Someone did it as their final... Yeah, but I'd like to see a professional production, please.
Speaker: Well, Ben Platt, is he not, is currently... It's on Broadway, right?
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: That would be an incredible performance to go and see.
Speaker: Probably Transfer.
Speaker: let's hope fingers crossed probably transfer and probably probably make sure the tickets aren't too expensive because i can't afford anything in the western right now my biggest thing that i still think about is that that sunday um i was literally about to say sunday on the pod because i was so used to sunday on the pod sunday in the park with george was with jake gyllenhaal that got cancelled was yeah was meant to be transferring and it
Speaker: I had the same with Imelda Staunton was going to do a production of, oh God, it's not coming to my head now.
Speaker: She was going to be the lead.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: She was going to be the lead.
Speaker: Oh, and that would have just been phenomenal.
Speaker: It was the production that was on Broadway, but I went to New York in two very close visits.
Speaker: So I went in the December when it was Bette Midler.
Speaker: I'm obsessed with Bette Midler.
Speaker: I love Bette Midler, but tickets were through the roof.
Speaker: You had to like cut off your arm to get a ticket.
Speaker: Yeah, and I was on a university trip and I felt like I couldn't leave the group and go, so guys, I'm going to go watch Bette Midler.
Speaker: You have a nice day.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like I didn't want to like just walk away.
Speaker: But I mean, they were ridiculous prices.
Speaker: It was like 450 like to sit in the like stalls.
Speaker: Yeah, but saying that now, people are spending a pretty penny for Beyonce.
Speaker: So it's just like, it's just the way it goes.
Speaker: yeah i did from the 1700s today a pretty penny a pretty penny yeah i don't know why i'm really channeling my type casting if there's any casting directors out there i am a celtic gal and i go for i go for them yeah i go for period dramas
Speaker: A lovely jacket will give you a pretty pin.
Speaker: I'd spend my last tuppence for a Beyonce concert.
Speaker: Oh my God, guys, what am I like?
Speaker: I'm normal.
Speaker: Bette Midler was on in the...
Speaker: in the December and then I went back in the March and watched Bernadette Peters do Hello Dolly which was glorious by the way because there's such a lovely moment I don't know if you're familiar with Hello Dolly but there's a lovely moment where it's kind of like the opening number and the ensemble's singing
Speaker: And then they all go, cool, on.
Speaker: And then Dolly comes in, like is hidden behind a newspaper and has been on stage the whole time and you don't realise.
Speaker: And she just sort of goes, Dolly Levi, like pushes it down.
Speaker: There was a solid like five minute applause.
Speaker: Like the whole show was at a standstill.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: It was just you applauding.
Speaker: Everyone else is that day.
Speaker: It was just me for five minutes.
Speaker: Security's like, we really need to stop her from coming into these shows.
Speaker: But I went and watched it twice.
Speaker: on the same trip because it was incredible.
Speaker: I loved the musical and I loved Bernadette, but then I seen that it was transferring over to London and it was going to be Imelda Stoughton.
Speaker: I was like, wow, that's going to be incredible.
Speaker: I'm so heartbroken.
Speaker: Imelda, if you're listening, I would like justice and I'd like you to push for that performance to come back.
Speaker: Oh, that would have been so good.
Speaker: But yes, I don't know how we got onto Hello Dolly from Parade.
Speaker: But just like that, we're back to Parade.
Speaker: So he wrote Parade in 1998.
Speaker: And then his next show, which I'm sure many of you have probably heard of, The Last Five Years, which he also worked on with Daisy.
Speaker: And the musical, I mean, it's said to be loosely based on his failed marriage with Terry O'Neill.
Speaker: who was actually Daisy's secretary, which I thought was a bit of, I know, a bit of fun fact.
Speaker: Really keeping it all in the family, this Mr. Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very much the people he knows.
Speaker: And then his other work includes Urban Cowboy, which I've never heard of.
Speaker: I might be slanted for that, but I've never heard of Urban Cowboy.
Speaker: Thirteen, The Bridges of Madison County, Honeymoon in Vegas, and Mr. Saturday Night.
Speaker: He later then married Georgia Stitt, who was the conductor of the tour of Parade, again, very in family.
Speaker: And they then later had a daughter named Molly.
Speaker: And just a fun fact, because I also completely forgot this when we were looking at Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: He's really close friends and he's a mentor of Ariana Grande.
Speaker: which we love.
Speaker: I knew that because she was in 13.
Speaker: She was in the original production.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: And when Brown was in LA for a couple of weeks, Ariana Grande had asked Jason Robert Brown to write her a new song for her album,
Speaker: And they worked on it together.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And I've actually heard the song and been like, it all makes sense now.
Speaker: So he agreed and they made a track and it was released on Ariana Grande's extended edition of Dangerous Women.
Speaker: And it's the song called Jason's Song.
Speaker: Oh, I would never know.
Speaker: And now it's all making sense.
Speaker: It's such a great song.
Speaker: And I was always like, what a jazzy tune.
Speaker: Like, it doesn't sound anything like the other stuff on Dangerous Woman.
Speaker: Great album, by the way, if you haven't listened to it.
Speaker: I really thought you were going to say it was Dangerous Woman.
Speaker: And I was like,
Speaker: bit outside the box and he was like we need to write dangerous woman um on the piano something about you it's also quite nice that um jason robert brown cynthia arrivo and ariana grande are all linked because they're obviously going to be in wicked 2024
Speaker: and Cynthia Erivo was in as just discussed was in the songs for a new world revival so that's like a nice oh my god of course see he keeps everyone you know it's all about the people you know and that's very much applies for Jason Robert Brown because his whole life you'll marry him
Speaker: But yeah, so a bit of a fun fact about Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: But most important thing about Jason Robert Brown is probably his musical style, which is extremely unique, I think.
Speaker: I think obviously it's been influenced by, I mean, different people.
Speaker: But I feel like you listen to a Jason Robert Brown track and you're like, yeah, that's definitely JRB, like 100%.
Speaker: He has kind of a pop rock feel to his kind of writing.
Speaker: A common theme, which you'll see a lot of in his writing, and for all my musos out there, this is where your ears are gonna prick up, he writes in rubato, which basically translates to being in like a laid back style without really staying to kind of like a strict tempo.
Speaker: So I feel like a lot of the time you'll hear like a song and you'll hear that the singer is quite on the beat, that they're kind of like a little bit laid back and I feel like that's very his style.
Speaker: Another thing that's very Jason Robert Brown is he likes to kind of have like a minimalistic idea, like a, so i.e.
Speaker: like a piano motif that he'll keep really kind of simple, but then he'll use that over and over and over again.
Speaker: And that will become like the theme of that song, or it'll be like the one thing that when you hear it, you're like, oh, that connects back to that moment.
Speaker: I mean, it's very classical musical theatre.
Speaker: to do but it's also Jason Robert Brown really utilises that.
Speaker: This is also again a serious muso note.
Speaker: He uses a lot of ostinatos and people at home being like what the hell is that?
Speaker: Basically an ostinato is a repeated musical phrase or rhythm.
Speaker: So it might just be like the same note played over and over and over again or it might be like a particular rhythm used over and over again and
Speaker: but as you'll hear later in one particular song I will go into detail about that but it's the more you listen to his stuff the more you'll hear kind of the same thing being repeated even if it's like in the background you'll start to kind of hear this like driving rhythm of
Speaker: of his Austenitis that he uses.
Speaker: It's very, very clever.
Speaker: He says actually that he's been inspired by people like Billy Joel and Joni Mitchell.
Speaker: Love Joni Mitchell.
Speaker: Again, I don't know why I'm telling you this, but just in case anyone wants to know.
Speaker: I love Joni Mitchell, but I love Billy Joel too.
Speaker: That man knows how to write a pop song.
Speaker: He knows.
Speaker: Well, he influenced Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: So did Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein.
Speaker: That's who he said were kind of his main influences.
Speaker: It's funny though, because I always thought that Jason Robert Brown and Sondheim was somehow related, but I don't know why.
Speaker: I think because they, I think maybe because they're like both my favorite composers in musical theater that I just was like, yeah, they're related.
Speaker: They're brothers.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Definitely not.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: Another kind of thing that you'll hear a lot of, which I kind of just briefly touched on, his music's very rhythmical.
Speaker: That's one of my favorite parts of just Jason Robert Brown's music is that it feels very unpredictable in like what you'll hear, especially in this album.
Speaker: A lot of the rhythms are very kind of like, you don't really know where the song is gonna be going.
Speaker: And he's known for using a huge amount of harmonies and having a wide vocal range.
Speaker: Again, I'm really going hard on the muso stuff.
Speaker: So muses at home, you're welcome.
Speaker: A lot of his songs follow kind of the same format, not all of them, but a lot of them follow a format of A-A-B-A, which basically means that he has like a verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, verse chorus, which is seen a lot in his kind of power ballards.
Speaker: It's very Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: And his love duets are written in male, female, both form.
Speaker: So it starts with a male, then a female, then both come together.
Speaker: I mean, for example, All the Time I Wasted from Parade, Tell Her from 13, and then you've got One Second and a Million Miles from Bridges of Madison County.
Speaker: And one final thing just to add in, just because I feel like I'm on a roll with my muso stuff, and I promise you this is the last thing people at home, is he loves to use haemiolas, which is not a disease.
Speaker: A heavy gola is a combination of triplets spread over two beats, which sounds really complicated and a bit confusing and doesn't really make any sense.
Speaker: But basically, say if something was written in like four, four, so there were four beats in a bar,
Speaker: he would, for two beats, he would write three notes and then that would be the triplet, basically.
Speaker: That's like a really basic way to say it.
Speaker: But saying that, he didn't really tend to write in four four.
Speaker: He tends to write in something called compound timing, which is basically, instead of having four beats to a bar, you'd have like a beat and a half, you'd have like four beats and a half to a bar, which again, sounds very, very confusing.
Speaker: So I feel like I'm really kind of confusing things, but that is just very Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: And the reason why I brought up hemiolas, not the disease, is that it's used a lot between the vocal line and the accompaniment.
Speaker: So say the accompaniment is just playing like steady beats at a time, the vocal line might use a triplet over the top.
Speaker: And that's basically the hemiola.
Speaker: And he basically uses as a tool to help highlight his text for dramatic effect and basically help prepare the performer for the money notes.
Speaker: The first example of this was seen from the flag maker, 1775, from Songs for a New World, in which the woman soloist whose husband is away at war spends her days sewing flags to raise morale.
Speaker: And the compound meter is basically underneath.
Speaker: And he uses the hemiola on the part where she sings one more star, one more stripe, as you pray for your child's not dead.
Speaker: And on the word dead,
Speaker: That's basically the last note of the descending melodic line.
Speaker: And that's the kind of, that's the thing that he's wanting to kind of highlight is that word.
Speaker: So yeah, that's kind of a lot of muso jargon that I've thrown at you at home.
Speaker: But I feel like I haven't, I haven't even touched the surface with Jason Robert Brown because I feel like he's a very, very clever, very, very clever composer.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: That's so interesting on the hemiolas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I wonder, that would be such an interesting exercise actually to like listen through like Bridges of Madison County or Songs for a New World or Last Five Years or something and like try and work out what the, like obviously dead is the word, but like what the other words are that he's trying to like punctuate.
Speaker: That would be fascinating.
Speaker: Also, massive shout out to Bridges of Madison County, man.
Speaker: That show is awesome.
Speaker: Chef's multiple kiss.
Speaker: I mean, this might be like a real reach to say, but I feel like, I feel like a lot of Jace Robert Brown's music is very similar to Shakespeare, where a lot of the acting stuff is in the text.
Speaker: I mean, obviously Shakespeare, genius.
Speaker: But, I mean, obviously if you don't already know who Shakespeare is, well, we have to have a chat.
Speaker: But yeah, I feel like he,
Speaker: really gives the actor a lot to work with, with his music.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So now onto one of my favorite parts of the pod.
Speaker: This is the time where we take a look at the themes and impacts and look at the songs lyrically and musically.
Speaker: So we're all going to take one of the songs and discuss it.
Speaker: So I'm going to hand you over now to Flo with opening sequence, The New World.
Speaker: Lovely, and just like that, it makes sense to begin at the beginning.
Speaker: This is literally the first song that you'll hear.
Speaker: So, A New World.
Speaker: The opening theme that you first hear is basically a very, very short piano motif.
Speaker: probably in about three notes off the top of my head.
Speaker: And then you hear the lyrics, a new world calls across the ocean, a new world calls across the sky, a new world whispers in the shadows, time to fly, time to fly.
Speaker: And basically it's laying out exactly what's about to happen for basically the rest of the show, I think, because it's basically telling you about
Speaker: the themes of life choices in a new world and how even when everything seems lost, people find a way to survive.
Speaker: And I think one of my favorite bits of the song itself is the lyrics, which I think really, really, really kind of lays out very, very clearly, again, kind of how the rest of the show is gonna go.
Speaker: So it says, it's about one moment, the moment before it all becomes clear.
Speaker: And in that one moment, you start to believe there's nothing to fear.
Speaker: which I just think is a really nice, it's just a really nice way to be like, guys, audience at home, this is what it's going to be about.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's also like a feeling that I feel like everyone has obviously gone through.
Speaker: It's like when you make a big decision, like say that you're going to quit your job, you're going to move somewhere new, there is like a space that you enter, isn't it?
Speaker: Where like you've done all the worrying and it's like you've just made that snap decision and you feel like, but it feels really exciting and it feels really free.
Speaker: And then obviously two seconds later, you're then like, oh my God, and I need to do this and I need to do this.
Speaker: But there is like that kind of hold in time, isn't there?
Speaker: Where you're not really thinking about those things.
Speaker: You're just thinking about like the...
Speaker: the decision.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So it's a very universal kind of feeling, which I guess lends itself very, very well for the rest of the show.
Speaker: Again, for all those muses out there, I've got your back.
Speaker: It's written in E flat major, just something fun to know.
Speaker: And as you would have just heard in my previous segment, it actually starts off in rubato, which is that kind of laid back
Speaker: not restricted kind of tempo.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And as I mentioned, it has a very simple piano motif to start off with.
Speaker: It's very soft, very reflective, very Jason Robert Brown.
Speaker: And then there's kind of a sudden change of feel with the entrance of the piano's ostinato motif, which basically comes in
Speaker: at FFF, which is forte, forte, forte, which is like obviously super, super loud.
Speaker: And it kind of is like the, it's kind of like the aha moment, like, okay, and the show's begun.
Speaker: Basically transporting you into the world of the show and changing the energy using its rhythm and its dynamic change.
Speaker: I feel like it also really, I feel like from quite a deep perspective, that kind of very monotonous kind of simple piano motif
Speaker: is kind of like the simplicity and repetition of life and how something can suddenly happen and it changes everything, but you've still kind of got that kind of like constant kind of motive running in the background, which I just thought was kind of, for any actors out there who might be wanting to sing the song, there you go.
Speaker: Despite some of the darker themes explored in later songs,
Speaker: I think what's kind of cool about the song is the funky offbeat piano.
Speaker: It's literally one of my favourite things that Jason Robert Brown does, is where you hear this like, kind of like bass line in the background where it's like, you can hear that it's not on the beat and it's kind of pushing the rhythm forward and it creates a sense of,
Speaker: kind of anticipation and excitement.
Speaker: And I feel like that's definitely, again, very Jason Warrant Brown.
Speaker: I feel like that's my phrase of the episode.
Speaker: It's very JRB.
Speaker: It really is though.
Speaker: There's that kind of like offbeat kind of tempo.
Speaker: Again, from the same Playbull interview,
Speaker: someone asked him, how do you describe the Jason Robert Brown sound or style?
Speaker: And he said, oh, I don't know.
Speaker: Songs is actually meant to be a showcase of all the various styles that I could write in.
Speaker: So there's a deliberate attempt to have a little of everything in there.
Speaker: Gospel, R&B, jazz, rock, salsa, polka, German music, basically anything, which I thought was just an interesting kind of quote to have in this because I feel, especially as we go through each of the songs,
Speaker: they do feel like you're in a different style for a lot of them.
Speaker: Oh completely like there's a number that always really surprises me in the show called the steam train yeah is like yeah kind of hip-hop sexy like yeah like pop it's really and it's it's really interesting like that number because it kind of is like part monologue part like real I don't know what the word is apart from to say like it's real it's real groovy that beat is groovy and
Speaker: Well it is.
Speaker: Actually I'll tell you what, there were so many songs when I was listening to the full thing all the way through that my jaw literally dropped.
Speaker: Like one of my favorite moments in this album is on the deck of the Spanish sailing ship.
Speaker: When he has those like high belting notes that come out of nowhere, you are just like damn.
Speaker: Like it is so, it's so good.
Speaker: So, so good.
Speaker: That's one of my favorite numbers from the show actually.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: You heard it here first.
Speaker: Spoiler!
Speaker: I'm a big fan of his use of reprise in this show as well because I think he does it... You could literally have a new world, the opening number.
Speaker: You could have that appear in every song but there's quite deliberate choices he makes.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I think on the deck of a Spanish sailing ship, it's almost like a continuation because it goes straight in.
Speaker: It goes like they finish and you're on and it goes ba ba da bum and then you end.
Speaker: And it goes straight into it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then I think, I think it ends right.
Speaker: And then at the end.
Speaker: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker: At the end.
Speaker: He's like finishing up some of his stuff, the ship captain, and then you hear like a new world.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And then they do like a full bit where it's like they basically do the end of the, the end of a new world again, but like it somehow really, really works.
Speaker: And they do that with Steam Trade.
Speaker: So you have like this really funky like 90s beat and then some like it catches you off guard basically.
Speaker: And you're like, oh my God, like why have they got a new world back in here?
Speaker: But it just makes sense because-
Speaker: Is it, do you know, I feel like things are just starting to click into place here a little bit as we're discussing it.
Speaker: But is the sort of deliberate motif of a new world coming in, is that like the moment of decision for everybody in the songs, that moment of decision is what leads them to a new world in their life?
Speaker: It could be.
Speaker: I don't know, because I think as Rosa said, it does come out of the blue.
Speaker: Like it kind of feels like,
Speaker: i.e.
Speaker: at the end of the song, when the song is kind of complete, it suddenly pops its head back up again.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker: I mean, on the deck of a Spanish sailing ship, I think it makes sense because I think the reason that they have that as the first number, the second number basically following on so closely, is because it kind of really wants to set out that this is...
Speaker: a completely it's not going to follow a plot line we're on the deck of a spanish sailing ship in 14 yeah too and just previously moments it was like a teacher being like get a house in the hills like they're talking about completely different experiences but it's just re i suppose like reinforcing that actually for thousands of years this is such a common human experience this like precipice of something new and like this decision so i think it i think that's when it
Speaker: I think it serves in a deck of a Spanish sailing ship.
Speaker: It's just a reinforcement of the theme that we're going to be looking at throughout the night and connecting something that is so foreign to us 600 years ago to a feeling that we're having in modern day.
Speaker: Steam train, I'm not really sure.
Speaker: It really does come out of nowhere in steam train.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But maybe that's, I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, listeners, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on why you think that he uses that.
Speaker: He brings back a new world in Steam Train because it is such an interesting choice and it really does bull you over.
Speaker: I mean, it could be his way of like...
Speaker: using a musical motive to basically, like production value sake, to basically keep the plot moving.
Speaker: So there's no like clunky stops.
Speaker: Like for example, literally between song one, song two, I couldn't tell when song two had started because it was so smooth and so effortless.
Speaker: And I was like, sorry, where is this sexy vocal line coming from?
Speaker: And I was like, oh my God, I'm in a complete different song.
Speaker: So I think he's very, very good at doing that.
Speaker: And basically just basically...
Speaker: merging the songs together so that it stays constant which definitely works I think in a song cycle this song in particular helps set the scene for how the song cycle is going to be going by having um different voices singing at different times uh so it's kind of basically telling the audience like you're going to be hearing there you go it's all making sense now it's basically telling very clever flow thank you
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I like that you guys seem surprised.
Speaker: Basically, he has different voices singing at different times, which for the audience establishes that you'll be hearing different stories from different people, but all the stories are linked with the same theme in that one moment, how, you know, how anything can change at anyone's point in life.
Speaker: And actually, again, to quote Jason Robert Brown, he said, it's about one moment.
Speaker: It's about hitting the wall and having to make a choice or take a stand or turn around and go back.
Speaker: That's basically what he said it's about.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I mean, it's like I'm obsessed with him, but again, from the same interview, we do think of all four performers in the show as having an individual arc throughout the piece and all of them have relationships with each other.
Speaker: Even though they're constantly changing identities, we always thought of them being the same person throughout as though their spirit took on an external form but remained the same internally.
Speaker: And part of the joy of the show to me is that they all are therefore recognized by each other.
Speaker: Oh, that's really sweet.
Speaker: Yeah, which is really, really sweet.
Speaker: Which again, maybe makes sense why like that theme of a new world randomly sometimes like comes back in because I guess it's like if it's the same person's story, but just told by a different person, maybe that's why.
Speaker: But again, listeners at home, if you have some secret intel that we don't know about, Jason Robert Brown, if you're listening,
Speaker: Please do let us know.
Speaker: And then as we just talked about, the song basically ends with the lyrics come to me and it kind of builds and builds and builds and then it effortlessly transports you into the first story.
Speaker: And that's basically, that's basically the opening song.
Speaker: I love the opening sequence.
Speaker: Like I, it really, it really,
Speaker: It does something to me.
Speaker: Like it makes me, like if I'm listening to it on like the train to work, I'm like, I'm ready for the day.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Very like just ready to go and attack anything and get stuff done and maybe jump on a flight to Spain.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Okay, that takes us quite nicely into Just One Step, which is my favourite song out of this whole song cycle slash musical slash J.R.B.
Speaker: being a... I will admit, I think he is insanely talented, but his writing style is not my favourite, which...
Speaker: I think it's just down to preference.
Speaker: I think for me, especially with this production, I really like a through line and I really like complex relationships between characters.
Speaker: And obviously you can't have that in something in which each song kind of stands alone to its own sort of story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I just really like sort of deep diving into a character's psyche and their journey throughout a whole show and their relationships with other people and how that sort of comes into play.
Speaker: So I think this is why maybe Songs for a New World's not always been my go-to.
Speaker: It's not something that I'd reach for, but Just One Step is an exception.
Speaker: I would say if I had to think of a song for you, it would be just one.
Speaker: Yeah, I think I'm just a sucker for a character song.
Speaker: I love a character song.
Speaker: And I don't know if we've discussed this before, but Just One Step was on my original set list for my one-woman show that I did in university.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Because it really would have lended itself quite nicely to it.
Speaker: My whole one woman show was basically a mob wife who was being left by a husband and was kind of on this journey of self-discovery and trying to get his attention, which unintentionally is actually the whole plot of the song of Just One Step, pretty much.
Speaker: But when I listened to it, I was like, oh, people are going to think I've fully just stolen my whole plot from this song, but I hadn't actually listened to it before.
Speaker: But then me and my singing tutor decided to go down the route of using all Barbra Streisand songs that she'd either written or covered.
Speaker: So I couldn't... What were the three Barbra Streisand songs?
Speaker: I had Barbara's version of Got No Strings.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I also had Could I Leave You from Follies, which she's covered in one of her Broadway albums.
Speaker: Also, it's mad to me that Streisand never did a Follies stint.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, she would have been so good.
Speaker: Imagine her doing like...
Speaker: I'm still here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That would be amazing.
Speaker: Just anything.
Speaker: I really think that Barbara should get another shot at Hello Dolly because I'm not sure if anyone knows the backlash that the Hello Dolly movie got when it came out, but it was pretty much a flop.
Speaker: Like it was such a big flop.
Speaker: I really like that movie.
Speaker: Yeah, me too.
Speaker: I think it's just because she was far too young.
Speaker: Like, Dolly Levi's supposed to be this, you know, like know-it-all, like lived, experienced,
Speaker: 70, 80 year old woman and Streisand was there when she was like, I think she was in her 30s when she was doing Hello Dolly.
Speaker: So it didn't just look stunning in that film.
Speaker: Yeah, she does.
Speaker: When I think of Barbara Streisand, I think she looks so beautiful in that film.
Speaker: Yeah, she's gorgeous.
Speaker: I think it's just she was far too young and I think if she were to do it now, it would be absolutely incredible.
Speaker: But I think you need to have that sort of, you know, those sort of chops that come with getting older, like the wise, wisecracking older lady as our Dolly Levi is.
Speaker: Anyway, I digress.
Speaker: Sorry, on a bit of a stride.
Speaker: I'm a grandmere.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But so just one step just to kind of give you an overview of the song is a wealthy woman steps onto the ledge of a window.
Speaker: I think it's it's one of the 50th stories.
Speaker: 57th or something.
Speaker: Yeah, 57th in order to kind of get her husband's attention.
Speaker: I just love the way it sort of comes in really quickly with a dun dun dun it's just really fun it's a really fun little intro and then she just kind of comes in with a Murray and it's oh I just love it that accent it's a great voice from Jessica Mulaski who is on the cast album it's a great voice
Speaker: is it Shoshana Bean that did it in the revival which was also brilliant really really wonderful version of that um and I'm just instantly as soon as I heard it I was like yep it's a character song putting that in putting that in my rep um older woman shouting at her husband love that um
Speaker: But I just really gelled with it.
Speaker: I really liked it.
Speaker: It's her trying to get his attention and she's kind of stood on the ledge singing this to him.
Speaker: You don't actually hear his voice and nobody kind of comes in as the husband.
Speaker: But the sort of notion is that she's still being ignored while she's stood on this window ledge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's just a really great little bit where there's obviously quite a crowd gathering underneath, like watching the commotion that's going on.
Speaker: And one of the lines is like, oh, there's so-and-so and Connie.
Speaker: Hi, Connie.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that bit.
Speaker: Hi, Connie.
Speaker: Hi, Connie.
Speaker: it's just kind of like look at what I'm doing I love it I just love it it also reminds me of the opening of First Wives Club which also has this exact same plot in that a woman's husband is leaving her for a younger woman so she like smokes a cigarette in a fur coat and just jumps off the top of like a 50 something apartment building
Speaker: So I wonder, I mean, I wonder what came first, actually.
Speaker: I wonder when's First Wives Club?
Speaker: Because that is very similar.
Speaker: That's 95, First Wives Club.
Speaker: So it wouldn't have even had like an overlap, really.
Speaker: They both had an overlap at the same time.
Speaker: Isn't that so odd?
Speaker: But maybe that speaks to Harvey's talent.
Speaker: He really tapped into that New York socialite.
Speaker: I told you he Shakespeare.
Speaker: everyone went silent everyone's like absolutely no what I really love about this song as well is it's really clever with its use of like on the belty notes I'm gonna I'm not as a well-spoken as flow with my muso knowledge so I'm gonna go with an abbreviation is it an abbreviation
Speaker: Not really sure.
Speaker: Do you know in a cartoon when something falls in a cartoon and it sort of has that like... Like that sort of... That was very good.
Speaker: That was really good.
Speaker: If you shut your eyes, you think you're watching like Tom and Jerry or something.
Speaker: Sticking that on my resume.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Can whistle.
Speaker: Anyone can whistle.
Speaker: Oh, dear.
Speaker: Oh, dear.
Speaker: um the the belty notes that she sings in that song sort of have that decline in the notes it has that sort of like especially on the watch me fly it kind of has those dips in the notes which is kind of like the sound of something dropping yeah
Speaker: Yeah, it's like a soundscape thing, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You are so right.
Speaker: It has that kind of sense.
Speaker: I don't know what you would use to describe that, but it's like an echo or like when you throw something down a well that like... Yeah, it's the same sort of in the original Willy Wonka.
Speaker: I'm...
Speaker: is it, yeah, the Willy Wonka film, the one with Gene Wilder in Veruca Salt's song, it was the same sort of, when she drops down the shoe, it's the same sort of when she goes, don't care how I want it now.
Speaker: And it has that sort of like... The slide, the slide.
Speaker: The slide down.
Speaker: And it's that sort of...
Speaker: visualization of her dropping through to kind of show that which i think is also she does it halfway through doesn't she she does it there's a moment where she does it halfway through is that her pretending to jump she i think she says after that like she uh almost fell there murray like uh i think she was about to do it and then it's kind of a still got more to say yeah um
Speaker: But I just love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And I like the sort of descent into... Almost like the descent into madness of the listing off everything.
Speaker: Which I also love in...
Speaker: could I leave you where she sort of reels off everything and it kind of accelerates the song as she's reeling off everything it's kind of like you get angrier do you know when you're sort of in an argument and yeah you're arguing about one thing and then it kind of brings up something else and then you just start to list off everything that that is ticking you off about the other person what are some of the stuff that she lists in sorry in which one in in just one step
Speaker: It's the sort of like where she's like, I'm embarrassing, I'm fat, demanding, controlling, that sort of section where she's reeling off everything that he's obviously said to her.
Speaker: And that's sort of propelling her to carry on with the song until, you know, it's sort of gathered this huge crowd below the window.
Speaker: Yeah, like it's winding her more up, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, and it's kind of the... I think there's a line where she actually says that she's like, look, I'm getting attention now or something.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, finally, Morrie, I'm getting attention.
Speaker: And then it goes back into that, and just one step.
Speaker: And it's just brilliant.
Speaker: It's really well written, and I really like that song.
Speaker: Which I just think is a nice descent as well from...
Speaker: Because quite a few in Songs from a New World are pretty ballads or really heartfelt songs.
Speaker: And I think it's a fun little... A little escape from that, which I really quite like.
Speaker: It feels quite cheeky.
Speaker: Yeah, it does.
Speaker: That's the best word.
Speaker: That's a better word than me going...
Speaker: I like that one though as well.
Speaker: It's not an adjective, but yeah, it's quite cheeky and it's, I don't know, that's just my favourite.
Speaker: Bit biased, but I like that one.
Speaker: And the ending's very ambiguous as well because she does like her.
Speaker: I was literally about to ask, do we know or we don't?
Speaker: She just goes, watch me.
Speaker: And then she does that big fly, which is like 32 bars of her belting.
Speaker: And then sometimes they're done with like a, oh, at the end.
Speaker: And then sometimes it's just straight bell until the note ends.
Speaker: But yeah, it's kind of unsure whether she does take the step.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: Also, there's a bit where she goes, that corny bit, she goes, it's Maury Povich.
Speaker: She's just shouting out Maury Povich.
Speaker: And then something about her mother crying diamonds as well.
Speaker: I think it's throwing diamonds into the crowd.
Speaker: Into the crowd or something.
Speaker: Like her stepmother or someone is throwing diamonds into the crowd.
Speaker: I think it's a mother-in-law, isn't it?
Speaker: That's it, mother-in-law.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Again, which I just think is like really interesting imagery.
Speaker: Because I was also trying to work out what that meant.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a strange one.
Speaker: It's kind of like, is it?
Speaker: I didn't know if it was like diamonds is in tears.
Speaker: Like she never liked me and now she's throwing diamonds to the crowd.
Speaker: I was getting the impression that it was sort of like since the mother-in-law never liked her and there's this kind of big like farce now of everybody stood watching this unfold.
Speaker: They're throwing diamonds into the crowd is sort of like a handing out popcorn sort of annotation.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker: Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, I didn't think of it like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's how I read it.
Speaker: I don't think it's very specific in what it means, but I'm taking it as like the... It's kind of like... That's very, very clever.
Speaker: Very clever.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Very clever.
Speaker: I also love Jesse Malaski does that bit where she's recounting all of the things that he calls her basically.
Speaker: So she says, you think I don't know about that or the things that you say to your friends every day.
Speaker: I'm embarrassing.
Speaker: I'm fat.
Speaker: I'm demanding and controlling.
Speaker: And then she does this very odd choice where she goes, and whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: You can really feel the rage, I think, in that moment.
Speaker: It is an odd, odd choice.
Speaker: I do love it when, you know when you're watching something and you're like, oh god, that was a really strange choice.
Speaker: But then it kind of works.
Speaker: Yeah, it makes you think about it, yeah.
Speaker: Like, what was the thing in Anything Goes?
Speaker: You're broccoli.
Speaker: That choice.
Speaker: It's just like it's such a strong choice.
Speaker: But I couldn't hear it any other way.
Speaker: In There Will Be Blood, I don't know if you've ever seen that, the Daniel Day-Lewis movie.
Speaker: It's like this epic film all about an oil tycoon.
Speaker: Oh, I've seen that.
Speaker: I have seen that, yeah.
Speaker: And the scene where he's obviously abandoned his child because his child got injured, it's really complicated.
Speaker: But there's a scene with the preacher where the preacher is like...
Speaker: kind of mocking him on stage and he's telling him to like recount all his sins but it's like a proper baptist teacher a preacher so he's like but you know like being like say you're sorry are you sorry for this and daniel day lewis's character is kind of like just going along with it for the crowd but he's getting visibly annoyed so he's like shouting out things he's like i abandoned my son and stuff and then for some reason it's like so heightened and paul dano as the preacher is like says something like
Speaker: are you sorry for what, or do you give your life to God?
Speaker: And Daniel Daly just goes, yes, I do.
Speaker: But like, this really, he's like, yes, I do.
Speaker: I love that you remember that.
Speaker: That's so niche.
Speaker: Because it's so odd.
Speaker: Whenever I see, like, whenever someone talks about them, all that pops into my head.
Speaker: Because he's just been, like, screaming.
Speaker: He's been doing, like, Daniel Day-Lewis, like, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then he just goes, yes, I do.
Speaker: Yeah, but I feel like that's the same with, like, because, okay, so obviously all the new Harry, all the new Harry Potters, they're not new, they've been out for years.
Speaker: But all the Harry Potter movies are now on Netflix.
Speaker: I feel like everyone's been re-watching them.
Speaker: Well, I definitely have.
Speaker: um and i feel like voldemort's laugh is such a choice like it's such a choice but you know what it just works i really enjoy the did you throw your name on the goblet of fire really like how fast he delivers that life there are so many moments in harry porter that you're like i can't believe that was left in
Speaker: Well, that's the thing with that, like, did you throw your name into the Goblet Fire thing?
Speaker: Isn't it?
Speaker: Like, the whole thing people say is, like, in the book or something.
Speaker: It says calmly, yeah.
Speaker: He says, like, he said calmly.
Speaker: It's like, hurry, did you go go go
Speaker: I'm going to talk about I'm not afraid of anything.
Speaker: So I love this song.
Speaker: It's kind of one of the most understated songs in the show.
Speaker: And I think it's one of the most interesting because on the face of it, it doesn't really appear like the character is facing like any imminent kind of like choice or decision that she's
Speaker: got a battle with she's more just talking about her frustrations with like the people in her life so she's talking about um her children her parents and her husband and how she basically just thinks that she is so much like braver and more honest and more daring than they are and this kind of distance between them basically and how she's ready to move on she feels like they're stuck
Speaker: For me, the number which is signed by Women One is as close to the audience than any other number it's before because it offers so much for the listener to kind of identify with and it prompts so much within because of its kind of vagueness.
Speaker: Although it's specific to one woman's experiences
Speaker: It traverses many feelings that people, women in particular, kind of go through in the period between being a teenager and becoming an adult.
Speaker: So I'm going to talk through some of the lyrics and do a bit of a lyric analysis and just discuss kind of what it prompts as like an audience score.
Speaker: So the woman begins by talking about her children.
Speaker: So she says, Jenny's afraid of water.
Speaker: I mean, she swims so well, but still she's afraid of water and she won't go near the sea.
Speaker: Not me.
Speaker: And Casey's afraid of darkness.
Speaker: I mean, she sleeps and all, but still she's afraid of darkness.
Speaker: So when the lights are out, she has to hold my hand.
Speaker: I don't understand.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's quite a cold way to be talking about your children.
Speaker: It feels like really apathetic towards their kind of fears.
Speaker: It feels like she doesn't really have any understanding or empathy to why her children might be scared in this way.
Speaker: Despite the fact that it's always sang by kind of a woman who's in their 20s.
Speaker: So there's not that much difference between her as a child.
Speaker: We can really see like a distance, I think, between her childhood and where she is now.
Speaker: And it kind of prompts us to think that maybe she grew up too young or that her own kind of childlike fears were maybe dismissed by her parents and she had to grow up with them quickly.
Speaker: But it also affects a feeling that many women have when they have children quite young and they feel caught between being a child themselves and between becoming this maternal figure.
Speaker: Like, when I think of my parents...
Speaker: like growing up I'm like oh they were adults and they like knew what they were doing and actually my mum had had well a couple years but my dad had was a parent by the time he was my age I'm like that is crazy to me that like when he was bringing my sister up that is like he was I don't feel like an adult I feel like you know that thing that's like I'm just a 23 year old teenage girl I'm a child literally a child
Speaker: I still eat like a child and I'm like, I need to sort out my life.
Speaker: I think that is a feeling that a lot of young parents have is they're like, I'm not ready to be this parental figure.
Speaker: I don't feel like my parents felt me when I was a child.
Speaker: So it kind of, it speaks to me as that kind of caught between.
Speaker: They don't feel ready to assume the kind of weight and responsibility that they perceive that their parents already had when they were bringing them up.
Speaker: Obviously, despite the fact that we've just talked about, their parents were likely going through similar feelings.
Speaker: This verse kind of makes me think of like a toddler walking around in their parents' shoes, where they're like, they feel really grown up an adult, but actually they're just still like a little girl.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she then proceeds with the chorus.
Speaker: She says, I'm not afraid of anything, be it mountains, water, dragons, darker sky.
Speaker: I'm not afraid of anything.
Speaker: Tell me where's the challenge if you never try.
Speaker: So watch me fly.
Speaker: So it's interesting that she chooses mountains, waters, dragons, darker sky.
Speaker: I don't know about you, but for me, all of those things are things that children are most often afraid of.
Speaker: So she's picking out heights, kind of like swimming or drowning, mythical creatures or monsters, the dark.
Speaker: But I think what's quite interesting is the word fly.
Speaker: So she says, be it mountains, water dragons, darker sky, and then watch me fly.
Speaker: It's not something that children are often afraid of, is it?
Speaker: The sky.
Speaker: Unless you're like chicken licking.
Speaker: Being like, the sky is falling.
Speaker: Chicken licking.
Speaker: Chicken licking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I know that you think that you're right, but the original story is chicken licking.
Speaker: I promise you.
Speaker: I know you think you're right, but I'm going to... I will not be... Rosa, I love that.
Speaker: I know you think you're right, but I'm going to tell you you're wrong.
Speaker: I'm not going to change the podcast to Chicken Little.
Speaker: But I will not have this.
Speaker: I've said this before and I've been ridiculed.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's more commonly known in the United States as Chicken Little, but it's chicken licking.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: I think the original, because it's like a European folktale, I think the original was Henny Penny.
Speaker: Why chicken looking?
Speaker: Isn't that like, that's chicken looking good.
Speaker: That just reminds me of KFC.
Speaker: Yeah, but it was written like way before KFC.
Speaker: It's like a really famous famous famous.
Speaker: Someone just loves KFC and was like, I have to write a story about a small chicken.
Speaker: I love how we'll have to distinguish like pre-KFC, post-KFC.
Speaker: But it makes sense because the other animals are called like Foxy Loxy or things like that.
Speaker: Like that rhyming pattern, it's chicken licking.
Speaker: I promise you, it's chicken licking, man.
Speaker: I feel like this is when people were like, you know, it's actually Nike, not Nike.
Speaker: And people went mad.
Speaker: Like, this is what it is.
Speaker: Anyway, children aren't really often scared of the sky, I wouldn't say.
Speaker: So I think it's a really interesting thing that she has decided to focus on.
Speaker: So for me, because she uses the word fly and she talks about flying a lot in the song.
Speaker: For me, it's quite childlike, basically, like flying is quite a childlike dream.
Speaker: That's something that you think of when you're younger because you're associating it with like superheroes or like you're like, oh, I love to fly.
Speaker: There's something that's really I always think of like we're walking in the air like that's quite a childlike.
Speaker: There's an innocence, isn't there?
Speaker: And I think for the women in the song, flying could refer to kind of her sense of adventure or her embracing the unknown, which is kind of constantly seeking.
Speaker: But I also think it reflects her isolation.
Speaker: Flying in the childish definition is something that superheroes do by themselves.
Speaker: Superman, Batman, they are lonely figures in the end.
Speaker: The evil that they fight and the adventures that they go on are often solo missions and
Speaker: bring danger to the people that they love.
Speaker: They live a hidden life, often shielding from their partners and their family, their alter egos.
Speaker: So for me, it makes me think, yep, she's flying, she's happy to do this, but at what cost?
Speaker: And who really knows her?
Speaker: What kind of barriers has she put in place?
Speaker: So she moves on to talk about her parents now.
Speaker: It is also worth mentioning, she does not mention the children for the rest of the song, which I'm a bit like,
Speaker: alright Islaf so she says this is one of my favourite lyrics for the social daddy's afraid of babies I mean he got through me but now he's afraid of babies guess he's scared of what they'll be not me oh I just love that and mum is afraid of crying you know she tries to hold it in she's afraid of crying and she can look at me with tears stuck in her eye and I don't know why so we're getting a little bit more clarity I think on why this woman maybe has some distance with her children
Speaker: Clearly she has not had a great upbringing.
Speaker: We can glean a few things.
Speaker: So her relationship with her father is clearly not good.
Speaker: He got through me does not denote a childhood filled with love and affection or kind of unity.
Speaker: It just seems like it was something, a duty that he had to fulfill.
Speaker: That kind of lyric to me speaks of quite a coldness between them two.
Speaker: A father not really willing to reach out and understand his daughter and not willing to see her as like a full person.
Speaker: Much in the same way that she's seeing her children right now, she's kind of reducing them down to their fears.
Speaker: Desi's scared of what they'll be, not me.
Speaker: With this line, the woman is suggesting that her relationship with her daughters is somehow different to the one that she had with her father, but that's not really what we inferred from that first verse.
Speaker: So this is the kind of first bit of like delusion.
Speaker: we almost see.
Speaker: It appears to us that she's just as emotionally distant from those that she loves as her parents were with her, yet she believes that she's kind of broken through some intergenerational trauma that she holds.
Speaker: So now we kick into the chorus.
Speaker: And this is a really exciting bit.
Speaker: The music really picks up.
Speaker: Her voice really takes on like a new form.
Speaker: She says, and I feel the calling of adventure and I hear the ringing in my ear.
Speaker: The lights are glaring, trumpets blaring.
Speaker: I'm right here.
Speaker: And I hear the calling of tomorrow and I hear the stirring in my bone.
Speaker: And then hold on a minute.
Speaker: What's come out?
Speaker: And David loves me.
Speaker: He's afraid to hold me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a real U-turn.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I think also like,
Speaker: I know I'm slightly backtracking, but you know how you talked about the air bit and how you talked about it being quite lonely, quite isolating.
Speaker: I think also, like, you could also see, like, the air is, like, quite free and, like, quite... Because it's endless.
Speaker: Like, if you look up at the sky, it's, like, it's infinite.
Speaker: So maybe that's her, like, wanting to have a sense of freedom.
Speaker: And I also question whether or not she... Maybe this looking into the, you know, character too much...
Speaker: Maybe she suffered with postpartum depression after having her child.
Speaker: And maybe, you know, part of that kind of feeling of like having a, like not wanting to have a child necessarily, maybe came from her parents where she saw that kind of maybe like resentment.
Speaker: She then, when she had a child was like, I also feel the same way.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely agree.
Speaker: Like I think, think about the sky.
Speaker: Yeah, there's infinite possibilities, isn't it?
Speaker: That's the whole, that's the whole thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I think when you're a child, the sky is the biggest thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's like, that's the, you know, you don't really think beyond the sky.
Speaker: which I think is is quite a childish sort of thought not necessarily afraid of it I just find that no yeah yeah she's grouped in with everything else but maybe maybe she's afraid of freedom like maybe she's afraid to see like what the world has out there
Speaker: because of the world that she's currently living.
Speaker: This is one of the songs where I was struggling to find out what was actually going on during the song.
Speaker: I felt like I was following along with the lyrics and I was talking about it, and it was making a little bit more sense now that you've kind of dived into it.
Speaker: But I think it's one of those songs where it's like, it's kind of just a dip into her psyche rather than it being like just one step where you've kind of got this whole story kind of laid out and you can sort of see, even though we don't hear about that woman's beginning, middle and end, you can sort of see where that would be going.
Speaker: Whereas with this song, I feel like it is sort of like a droplet into, you know, a drop in the water of what's actually going on within her life.
Speaker: And this is sort of like a tiny little snippet
Speaker: of her mindset and what she's thinking and feeling and it might it might be done purpose purposely that it's not that's what i was about to say is like the whole point of it is that it's deliberately vague and it is meant for us to interpret yeah exactly and it's meant for us to find bits that we kind of hold on to as well and we can recognize those feelings yeah i also think going way back now um
Speaker: I think as well, there's something in that, like when she's saying, oh, I don't understand how my kids can be afraid of this.
Speaker: I think it's, she's, sometimes I think she's saying, I don't understand how to comfort them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like I don't understand what to do.
Speaker: And like, that's maybe where that disconnect is.
Speaker: But I think you're right as well.
Speaker: I think it also speaks of a postpartum.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That kind of distance that sometimes mothers and fathers can feel with their children.
Speaker: Well, on Wikipedia, weirdly enough,
Speaker: Someone said that this song is about a young woman reflecting on the fears of the people she loves and then comes to realise how they have held her back.
Speaker: See, I disagree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Isn't that interesting?
Speaker: I think she presents other people's fears as what's held her back.
Speaker: And I think by the end she realises it's her own fear of letting anyone in that is holding her back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we will continue.
Speaker: So David's just come into the picture.
Speaker: So she's been going off on this like proclamation of her desire to like get out there and live and like this kind of current that is pulling her arguably away from her family to like leave and follow adventure.
Speaker: But hold on a minute.
Speaker: Who's David?
Speaker: And why is he kind of like jarred her thoughts in this way?
Speaker: Cause it is really different.
Speaker: Like the music's really like ramping up.
Speaker: There's like this crescendo, the tempo's picking up and then suddenly it's like, boom, boom, boom.
Speaker: And then it's like, and Jane loves me.
Speaker: And it, you know, it feels like this has just come out of nowhere.
Speaker: I can't not hear Myra Rose saying David.
Speaker: David.
Speaker: David.
Speaker: I'd like to see that version.
Speaker: and David loves me there you go very good that's what I was waiting for that's what everyone at home was waiting for so good oh oh my god sorry I've probably completely thrown you off
Speaker: No, don't worry.
Speaker: So we can assume that David is probably her husband.
Speaker: He's afraid to hold me, she says.
Speaker: And this line really, as I've said, it stops the music, slows it right down.
Speaker: And then she takes a beat before she says, before she picks back up.
Speaker: And it feels like a breath.
Speaker: Like it feels like she's taking like this moment to like, it feels like it's caught her off guard as well.
Speaker: She tries to pick back up again to kind of resign herself to adventure.
Speaker: So the temple picks back up and yet again, she is stopped by a further thought of David.
Speaker: And David loves me.
Speaker: He's afraid to tell me.
Speaker: David loves me.
Speaker: He's afraid to trust me.
Speaker: He's afraid to hold me.
Speaker: He'll always be.
Speaker: He's afraid of me and I'm not afraid of anything.
Speaker: Very interesting love I would say.
Speaker: Suddenly it's all about David.
Speaker: He's consuming your thoughts.
Speaker: So for me this is the big turning point.
Speaker: Before we might have believed her kind of distance or believed her bravado about how bigger and better and braver she is than her family.
Speaker: How she doesn't need them.
Speaker: But now it fully reads and I don't think this is a
Speaker: inherently bad negative word but it's delusion really because every thought of her actually getting out
Speaker: And going on this adventure is interrupted by her thoughts of David and the issues that cloud them and the barriers that she has perhaps put in place that stop David from connecting with her.
Speaker: You notice everything is he's afraid to tell me.
Speaker: He's afraid to trust me.
Speaker: He's afraid to hold me.
Speaker: And it's not anything that she's kind of putting out to him.
Speaker: It doesn't, you know, she's not saying I'm reaching out to David and he's not, he's not reciprocating.
Speaker: He's afraid to kind of get to that, that point with her.
Speaker: So the song kind of now reads to me as a young girl who's desperately trying to like work through many of the issues that her upbringing has perhaps given her.
Speaker: So the issues of being caught between childhood and adulthood and the walls that you kind of put up in place to stop anyone from seeing you, kind of intergenerational trauma stuff.
Speaker: And it's not really too much of a song about being on the precipice of something.
Speaker: Rather, it's a song about being on the precipice of being on the precipice of something.
Speaker: if that makes sense.
Speaker: So it's about the work that you have to do before you get to the point of realizing what you've got to do.
Speaker: Like, I don't think you can even articulate or recognize at this point what is going on and what's going wrong in each of these relationships.
Speaker: She just knows something's not right.
Speaker: And for her, the response is to like, to have flight and to go.
Speaker: But these kind of
Speaker: little flashes keep coming right it feels like someone trying to like desperately understand what her fears what her motivations mean whilst convincing the world that she has none um so then we have this kind of last
Speaker: verse which is just gorgeous so she goes off about how she's not afraid of anything again and she says I am sure to win with anyone at all I'm not afraid of anyone not a soul alive can get behind this wall so first bit that she's admitting that she's got a bit of a barrier she's got a bit of a wall up to the people that she loves so not a soul alive can get behind this wall so let them call and watch them fall because after all I'm not beep afraid
Speaker: So her last verse is key.
Speaker: So let them call.
Speaker: So if you're trying to convince this, that you don't really care if no one gets behind this wall that you put up, why let someone try at all?
Speaker: It reads to me as like an invitation.
Speaker: So let them call.
Speaker: It feels like a challenge to David.
Speaker: Like, please come and get me.
Speaker: Please try.
Speaker: Even though I think that you won't be able to.
Speaker: And then I think what's even more interesting, especially with what you were talking about earlier, Flo, with the, was it Himalayan?
Speaker: Hemiolas.
Speaker: Hemiolas.
Speaker: Very close.
Speaker: That well-known disease.
Speaker: It feels like something a tone crier would be like, Hemiolas.
Speaker: Hemiolas, get your homeolas.
Speaker: Three for a pound.
Speaker: Three.
Speaker: Three for a tuppence.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: It all comes back.
Speaker: It's almost like we're doing a song cycle.
Speaker: It all comes back.
Speaker: But I think for this, the Emmy Awards, I think this is where they might come in.
Speaker: So what I think is very interesting about this end bit, she's been talking all throughout the song to be going, I'm not afraid of anything.
Speaker: But on the last line, there is a deliberate and definite pause.
Speaker: between I'm not and afraid so it goes I'm not afraid or much nicer if you're Andrea Burns um her last word for that full song is afraid and it's disconnected with the other part of the sentence so the last line that she ends on the conclusion that she comes to at the end of the song
Speaker: I think is yeah you are in fact afraid she's afraid and it would be interesting to see if you like maybe I'm wrong and the hemioma doesn't appear but it would be interesting to hear in that number if that's where that appears and that's where the folk where Jason Robert Brown wants to focus yeah so I think
Speaker: this like isolated word because the music halts as well and it's like a such a deliberate pause it serves as her conclusion that she is indeed afraid and the realization of that might be the final breakthrough to her arriving at the precipice of something new so she's at the point where she's maybe ready to make a decision or knows what she needs to tackle
Speaker: I think the song is just like so I know that we've just been through the whole thing.
Speaker: So apologies listeners, because I'm sure you're like, I could have listened to it love.
Speaker: But I think the song is just so wonderfully designed.
Speaker: Not only does it ask questions of her character and her intentions, but it's deliberately vague enough that it prompts questions in us too.
Speaker: And it kind of asks the question like, what do you need to work through to arrive at your moment of decision?
Speaker: So after that barrage of lyrical analysis I think it would be good to find out from you guys what is your most skippable song on the soundtrack and what are some of your favourite lyrics.
Speaker: So let's do favourite lyrics first.
Speaker: So Flo, any kind of favourite lyrics you've got from the show?
Speaker: Well, one of my favourite... Okay, this is like not answering a question at all, but my favourite song from the show, one of them, because I've got lots, one of them is Stars and the Moon, because we looked at it in drama school, and I really, really liked the song when we were looking at it, because I just never heard a song like it before.
Speaker: And I really, really like her line where she says, I'll give you the truth...
Speaker: Yeah, well, she's basically talking about what one of her husbands would be offering her.
Speaker: And she says, I'll give you the truth and a future that's 20 times better than any Hollywood plot.
Speaker: And I thought, you know, I'd rather have a yacht.
Speaker: Which is just like, I love that song because there's so many like funny bits in it where she even says like, I'd rather have champagne.
Speaker: Like there's just so many bits which I just think are really funny.
Speaker: What about you, Rosa, though?
Speaker: What's your favourite lyric?
Speaker: So I have, I really enjoy, there's a song called She Cries, which is basically about this guy who's in love with this girl.
Speaker: I'm not sure if she treats him that nicely, but he's just like, basically I'll do anything for her.
Speaker: And even when she treats me like shit, like I just love her.
Speaker: Which is obviously not a nice thing, but there's a really nice line in it that is, there's a couple of things I've learned on the many roads I've taken.
Speaker: Flames are not what get you burned, it's the cold in the ice.
Speaker: Here's a piece of advice I got from a little bird.
Speaker: The flames can get you stirred, it's the cold that leaves you shaken.
Speaker: which is very wordy and it's very clever.
Speaker: There's lots of different rhyming portions to it, but I just, the cold, it's the cold that leaves you shaken, I think is a really nice like imagery.
Speaker: I really like that, especially because like fire, people talk about fire as like a destroyer, but really it's like a, in kind of folklore, it's used as like renewal, isn't it?
Speaker: Like the Phoenix rising.
Speaker: Also quite spiritual.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's meant to be something new.
Speaker: So I think I quite like that because it ties in with what he's, like the fire is the new world.
Speaker: It's the making the space for something different.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: What about you, Casey?
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I really, really like the line from the same song, and she cries, that she smiles and you'll stay forever.
Speaker: She screams, well, that's the price you pay.
Speaker: I'm like, oh.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Poor guy.
Speaker: He's been through a lot.
Speaker: There are so many moments in this which are really heartbreaking, like really, really heartbreaking.
Speaker: Like the one about the, I think it's the one flying home about
Speaker: like the, is it about the sailor who's like, or something who's died?
Speaker: Yeah, and he wants, he basically is talking about returning home, but he's died.
Speaker: It's basically his body returning home.
Speaker: It's not him.
Speaker: And that, the song is really, really sad when you know what it's actually about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: God, Jason Robert Brown, man.
Speaker: He really does know how to.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He's, okay.
Speaker: And on that note, what's everyone's skippable song?
Speaker: Mine, hear my song.
Speaker: I think it's... Yeah.
Speaker: I think it's beautiful.
Speaker: Like when you, like listening to it sung by like a group of people, it's like, that's quite pretty, but it's also a bit of a snooze fest.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Snooze fest.
Speaker: We had to sing it for our show in college.
Speaker: We did like a little, just like a mishmash of everything, like a bit of an extravaganza.
Speaker: And we did Hear My Song.
Speaker: Extravaganza.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: It was just a mix of everything.
Speaker: Very eclectic.
Speaker: And we finished on Hear My Song and I was just like, you want to go out on something like country?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe he was like, ooh, let's probably try to wrap this up.
Speaker: Let's try to close this story in.
Speaker: It gives me the same vibes as, oh God, I was in Spring Awakening.
Speaker: I can't remember what the last song is.
Speaker: A Song of Purple Summer.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That's another one.
Speaker: Anticlimactic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very anticlimactic.
Speaker: It's just very boring.
Speaker: And Spring Awakening, I think it's a really clever show.
Speaker: I really enjoy it.
Speaker: But it's not my favourite.
Speaker: But I do think that it just ends on the worst song of the show.
Speaker: Agreed.
Speaker: I never listened to that song, actually.
Speaker: I was, that's my skippable song of that show.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Shame.
Speaker: No, I'm the same.
Speaker: I'm with you, Casey.
Speaker: I think Here My Song is.
Speaker: I think it's nice.
Speaker: Like, I think it's fine.
Speaker: But compared to the other ones in the show.
Speaker: Yeah, I think as well, if you've, like... I actually think that Flying Home or... Like, I think that should have been the end song and then they should have found a way to, like, bring everybody else in.
Speaker: Loop it back.
Speaker: Because I actually think it's weirdly nice to end on a death because death is also a new beginning.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: It's like...
Speaker: think Jason.
Speaker: Robert Brown, hi, I'm there.
Speaker: Well, controversially, my skiffle song would be the Santa song.
Speaker: Oh, Surabaya Santa?
Speaker: Yeah, I just, I start listening to it and I just get irritated, but it might just be that particular cast recording, but any song that's quite a specific character, where they're like, I'm playing a character, that kind of thing,
Speaker: it grates me and I can't listen to it over and over.
Speaker: Like the first we used to it, you're like, well, that w as a funny song.
Speaker: But the next time you're a bit like, oh, if it's like, you know, 7am in the morning and you're on your way to work, your commute, you don't really want to be listening to a Santa song.
Speaker: You maybe want to listen to like, you know, the opening, the new world.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Because it's based on a Kurt Weill style of song, I think.
Speaker: So it's got that kind of Brechtian... It feels very like Threepenny opera.
Speaker: That's like the best way to describe it.
Speaker: It's Kurt Weill.
Speaker: Yeah, it feels like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is very like, wow, it's very Vladimir.
Speaker: I love this character that you've developed.
Speaker: It's like over the episodes of Hacupus.
Speaker: It's like this Cockney character who probably featured in Sweeney Todd or Les Mis.
Speaker: It's because me and Ewan were watching Silo the other day and he was like, oh, if we all had to go underground in society, had to start fresh, what job would you have?
Speaker: And I'd said, oh, I think I'd be a baker or something.
Speaker: And he was like, you'd be the town crier.
Speaker: And he was saying that I'd be like,
Speaker: Get your newspapers here.
Speaker: World's got a ride.
Speaker: Which I just got this print.
Speaker: That's so funny.
Speaker: Have you got a bell?
Speaker: I think it'd have like a horn or something.
Speaker: It's very fancy.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: Well, that takes us on very nicely into one of my favorite bits of our show, which is the magic generator.
Speaker: Now, this is very exciting because every single episode, we have the chance to do our very own fantasy casting, but this is extra special.
Speaker: because we have a magic generator to help us.
Speaker: And it's so magic that with a touch of a button, Rosa will produce a number of random names that we now have to cast.
Speaker: Now, these names, they could be well-known musical theater performers.
Speaker: They could be actors, they may be actresses, TV personalities, as well as a few wild cards.
Speaker: So without further ado, who have you got auditioning today, Rosa?
Speaker: auditioning auditioning i say that every single episode oh do you never stay soon first up uh to enter the casting room is melissa john hart now i was also just sabrina the teenage witch no she's an evangelical christian i tell you what this is actually really hard because none of the parts have like a visual look to them
Speaker: Well, what I was going to say is maybe we should assign them a song that we could see them singing.
Speaker: Okay, regardless of if they can sing or not.
Speaker: Regardless.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So Melissa Joan Hart, she's entered the casting room.
Speaker: I'm not afraid of anything.
Speaker: Go.
Speaker: That's what I'd say.
Speaker: Bang, there's the sheet music.
Speaker: Go.
Speaker: I'd say the same thing.
Speaker: I think it's because...
Speaker: Although, actually, because we kind of talked about how this woman might have had children really young, and I'm not sure how old most of Joan Hart is now, but I think she's in her late 40s, I think, isn't she?
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I could see her doing, I'm not afraid of anything.
Speaker: Actually, you know what I could see her doing?
Speaker: I could see her doing a Stars and Moon moment, where she's in a little fur jacket and she's smoking a little cigarette.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: yeah smoking a bogue being like very good i'd rather have a yet who else have we got in okay okay uh robert pattinson has entered the chat oh okay
Speaker: Oh, Robert's hard, but I could see him being very method actor, like him and the Batman doing On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship.
Speaker: I was just about to say that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But as a dramatic monologue, he doesn't sing it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No singing, Robert.
Speaker: No singing from Robert Pattinson.
Speaker: We don't need to hear Robert Pattinson sing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You never know, he might have the voice of an angel.
Speaker: Questionable.
Speaker: You know what I'm waiting for?
Speaker: I'm waiting for someone to make a Twilight musical.
Speaker: Oh, it'll happen.
Speaker: I think there has been, yeah.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: I mean, I saw that there was a Twilight spoof musical at Edinburgh Fringe this year, which I really, really wanted to go see.
Speaker: But, yeah, I could imagine there'd be someone out there being like, our next musical is going to be Twilight, the saga.
Speaker: Bring it on.
Speaker: But what would they even... One, it'd be like eight hours long.
Speaker: One of the songs...
Speaker: One of the songs would be like Crystal Skin.
Speaker: And it would be about him like singing about his.
Speaker: Crystal being like, don't look at me.
Speaker: Like that would be one of his songs.
Speaker: Think how many songs that they could do.
Speaker: They could do like a whole like first ballad plus two reprises.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Of like songs of him just watching her sleep.
Speaker: Except very creepy.
Speaker: And the baseball game.
Speaker: That would be very fun to sing.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be cute.
Speaker: But I don't think, this is my thing with Twilight, weird that we all thought it was so sexy at the time, because now- You rewatch it now, and you're like, no, that is embarrassing.
Speaker: That's really, that's not okay.
Speaker: When he's like, so the lion fell in love with the lamb.
Speaker: And then she says something like, he says, what a stupid line.
Speaker: And she's like, what a silly lamb.
Speaker: Like that.
Speaker: She, in that movie, there's so many moments where you're like, why did you make that acting choice?
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Like the whole thing, like it's just, yeah.
Speaker: I never got onto the Twilight hype.
Speaker: I was, I literally remember watching the first one and being like, why is everybody enjoying this?
Speaker: I found it so, I don't know.
Speaker: I think Kristen Stewart, I really don't like.
Speaker: I really don't like her in Twilight.
Speaker: I'm just like, why?
Speaker: Why are you making that choice?
Speaker: It's all the... Yeah, the awkward... She just moans her way through the film.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't think that's down to her because I think, one, she's grown as an actress now and I think she's actually very good.
Speaker: But I also think that he makes a lot of weird choices as well.
Speaker: Like that bit where she comes into the classroom and like, obviously the whole thing is that like her smell is so overwhelmingly good or something like that.
Speaker: He's like, have you seen that when she walks into the classroom?
Speaker: And he's like essentially throwing up like in his head.
Speaker: It's so stupid.
Speaker: Will you describe it like that?
Speaker: It's so stupid.
Speaker: And then she's like, oh my god.
Speaker: Then they're talking about it.
Speaker: She's like, I thought I smelled.
Speaker: And he was like, smelled so good.
Speaker: If he wasn't a vampire and he was just a normal person, you'd be like, he's a walking red flag.
Speaker: Well, there is an interview with Robert Pattinson where he, they're like, oh my God, so like, do you, what do you think about Edward?
Speaker: Like, it's so romantic.
Speaker: And he's like, he's a 110 year old virgin.
Speaker: Like, he's creepy.
Speaker: Yeah, creepy.
Speaker: Which is horrible to say, but I am like, it's not the virgin part, but more creepy that he's 110 being like, this 17 year old is who I want.
Speaker: There's another weird acting choice in there where just that scene where she goes,
Speaker: You named my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?
Speaker: Oh my god, so good.
Speaker: That delivery is just so good.
Speaker: I feel like I need to stop re-watching them now.
Speaker: I think they're all on Netflix.
Speaker: Actually, I can't believe we've not even mentioned Jacob's Bella.
Speaker: Where have you been, Loka?
Speaker: Where the hell have you been, Loka?
Speaker: It's so cringy.
Speaker: Well, Rosa, give us one more.
Speaker: Okay, last one.
Speaker: Last one for the day.
Speaker: We have... All right.
Speaker: Demi Lovato.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So basically she can sing any part in this.
Speaker: I know we've just talked about this, but I would love her to sing on the deck of a Spanish sailing ship.
Speaker: I know it's not female, but her voice with this song
Speaker: would be stunning.
Speaker: I could see her doing a little just one step moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it being very funny.
Speaker: And she can do that lovely belt at the end that's like 32 bars of just like, blah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I, in my head though, I feel like just one step.
Speaker: I feel like I want an older lady.
Speaker: I want like a... Oh, I'm talking like Demi Lovato in 20 years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker: So Demi, you didn't get the part, but you did get it in 20 years time.
Speaker: I was like, Demi, tell your agent to call me in 2043.
Speaker: Oh my god, 2043.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I'll be 46.
Speaker: Oh, let's not play that game.
Speaker: Yeah, let's probably not do the counting game.
Speaker: Well, what an eclectic little production of Songs for a New World we've got there.
Speaker: That's set in 20 years, apparently.
Speaker: So 2043, coming to a theatre near you, we'll have Demi Lovato.
Speaker: So there's no guest performer slot this week, sadly, due to scheduling conflicts, but we are still on the lookout for anyone who fancies recording a song for our social media and coming on the pod to talk about the show we're covering.
Speaker: If this sounds like something you'd like to be involved in, you can apply for our guest performer slot by clicking on our link tree in our podcast description and filling in our short application form.
Speaker: It's a really open process and after you apply, we'll keep you in our talent pool and reach out if we're covering a show we think you'd sound great covering a song from.
Speaker: So what are you waiting for?
Speaker: Click the link tree and apply for the pod.
Speaker: And just like that, we've been a new world.
Speaker: Bye.
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