by Noah Hammond
While listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on Spotify and keeping up with what happens in the musical, I’m impressed with how well it tells a complete and interesting story. Reading and studying history from a textbook can get tiresome, so the fact that Hamilton can tell the story of Hamilton with modern-sounding soundtrack is quite a feat. Miranda’s ability to have the characters personalities and motives shine through in their songs makes the story of Hamilton easy and enjoyable to follow.
I’ve been reading Game of Thrones recently and I can see a lot of similarities to Hamilton with how the stories are told. Both utilize the characters in the story to draw the audience in and get them to care about what happens to the characters and their goals. There is even parallels between the stories in the political sense. Characters clash with each other when their goals conflict and there are big consequences for almost all characters that try to get involved.
The thing that is significant about Hamilton and where I believe it gets a lot of its popularity from is that it tells the story in a form that approachable and already popular for a lot of people today. Hip-Hop has almost taken over the music industry and has so many different forms that nearly anyone can enjoy the soundtrack of Hamilton. It also has a diverse cast which helps attract more attention for being a unique and progressive group of people. All of these things combine to make Hamilton an extremely popular musical that has taken the country’s attention and held it for awhile. The price of tickets to see the musical is evidence enough of that.
