New music! Sometimes old music. Music that we love!
Driverless cars. Wearable tech. Virtual reality that does not actually suck. We live in an age of wonders. And yet, the greatest innovation of recent years may be this: a hip-hop Broadway smash based on an 800-page historical biography about one of America’s most misunderstood and divisive founders.
It’s likely that you at least have some awareness of “Hamilton.” And if you have a few hundreds bucks to spare you may even have seen it. There has been a lot of buzz. But like all truly great innovations, “Hamilton” is not just a novelty. Have you heard these songs?
In our review of Chernow’s books on Hamilton and George Washington, we proposed that Hamilton was the Kanye to Washington’s Jay Z. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer and composer of “Hamilton,” has taken it to the next level.
Here are a few other gems you should check out:
- The Schuyler Sisters (looking for a mind at work)
- Helpless (Hamilton meets his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler)
- Cabinet Battle #1 (Hamilton destroys Thomas Jefferson on the topic of the federal vs state debts)
- Non-Stop (Hamilton’s post-war life)
Michael Moats