a tip for understanding musicals from just the cast album

everydayatleast:

If you’re listening to the songs out-of-context and a character says something metaphorical, hyperbolic, hypothetical, and/or abstract, take it either SUPER literally…

• Evan sings about falling in a forest and nobody being around to hear it? Yeah, the boy literally fell out of a tree. And no one came to help him
• Javert yells for an entire song about how sinners will fall? He’s going to fall to his death, just wait
• Jenna doesn’t know it yet, but “Take It From an Old Man” is about Joe literally asking her to take his business
• J.D. from Heathers or Kim from Miss Saigon says they’d give their life for someone? Oh, they’re so gonna
• Burr says, “Fools who run their mouths off wind up dead”? The person he sings that to and the person who sings after him are both not making it to old age
• …I’m just going to take this moment to point out that the phrase “I’ll Cover You” also has the meaning of “I’ll bury you”
• Everyone in the opening number of Tuck Everlasting is singing about living like this forever? I kid you not, you’re about to find out that the main people in this song are immortal

…or, if a character says something super literal, just go ahead and assume that the opposite will turn out to be the case:

• Gabriel sings a whole song about how he’s alive, he’s alive, he is so alive? Boy, he’s dead
• Julie and Billy sing a song called “If I Loved You”? THEY LOVE EACH OTHER OKAY
• sorry, I’m just sitting here laughing at the sheer irony of the song title “No One Else”
• as we have learned, Cathy could not, in fact, do better than that
• in a stunning twist, Amy from Company is, in fact, getting married today