My Heart Is Like Wow!

The more we get to live inside this Be More Chill score, the more we discover its hidden gems.

Por ejemplo...

The vamp that opens the first number reappears throughout the score. It's a four-note figure and it's brilliant. At first when I heard it, it sounded slightly familiar. After a while I realized why.

It's almost the same vamp as in the Little Mermaid song "Part of Your World." Disney's vamp is Bb - C - D - F. It outlines a Bb major chord, plus it adds the second degree of the scale for a little color. However, the vamp in Be More Chill is Bb - C - E - F. The only difference is that the third note, on the third degree of the scale, is changed -- to the tritone!

The tritone is the fourth degree of the scale, but raised a half step. It's often known as diabolus in musica (the Devil in Music), and it's often used to make music feel "wrong" or "dangerous," for one reason or another. In fact, the tritone is all over the score for West Side Story. Here, in Be More Chill, Iconis has taken a common, pretty, "happy" vamp, and he has changed it, complicated it, just enough to make it sound somehow "wrong." Because Jeremy's world is "wrong," out of balance.

The score is full of this kind of subtle musical storytelling.

When Christine sings her joyful, wildly enthusiastic paean to the magic of theatre, her music frequently goes "out of time," because her enthusiasm can't be contained by the regular meter. It's a subtle, but impactful musical device.

The song starts out in "normal" 4/4, but as Christine repeatedly gets swept away, she constantly seems to get ahead or behind the beat, she drops beats in her hilariously adorable mania, falling into odd meters like 7/8 and 6/4. But at some point, she always catches herself and returns home to 4/4, as she returns to the safety of her theatre. It's a neat, almost subliminal trick that most people in the audience won't consciously notice, but they will sense that it's odd, that it's somehow out of control...

But what's transcendent about this quirky, jumpy, character piece, is that beneath the crazy mental leaps, the oddball language, and the obvious ADD, Christine also gets at something she can't quite define, but theatre people know what it is -- it's the sacred. The theatre is a scared place, where we reenact rituals to try to understand ourselves and the world around us. The vast majority of human communication is in the form of storytelling (think about it!), and the most potent form of storytelling is LIVE storytelling, and the most emotional form of storytelling is musical. Christine couldn't put all of her feelings into words,  but she understands this in her bones.

She sings:

And no matter how hard I try.
It's impossible to narrow down the many reasons why
I love play rehearsal;
I happiness cry
Whenever it starts...
. . .
Back to play rehearsal,
My brain is like bzzzz,
My heart is like wow!
Because we're here at play rehearsal,
And it's starting,
We're starting,
It's starting
Soon

I have this theory that a lot of theatre people "feel too much." They experience emotions more extremely, more intensely than most people, and theatre is a way to express all that big emotion. Christine proves my theory:

I am passionate a lot,
And I have mad gigantic feelings,
Rad and frantic feelings,
About most everything,
Like gun control, like spring;
Like if I'm living up to all I'm meant to be...
I also have a touch of ADD…

There's so much more going on in this song than it first appears. That's really good writing.

Christine's Act II song, "A Guy That I'd Kinda Be Into" is another playful, bouncy number, this time a kind of mambo that's marked "Giddy but Steady." I love Iconis' markings.

Of all the characters in the show, Jeremy sings in the most conventional, most mainstream pop music language, while the other characters often don't. But Iconis still delivers some treats, like in "The Squip Song," when Jeremy sings about tripping, he drops two beats and creates a hiccup in the music. It's subtle, but it's cool.

In that same song, when Rich finally describes and explains the Squip, almost that entire section is one repeated note, becoming almost mechanical, inhuman. Then Rich repeats the section, but up an octave in a rock tenor, while backup vocals sing a ragged, (again) almost mechanical counter-melody.

The coolest moment in that song is the music that accompanies the lyric, "Helps you to be cool, it helps you rule!" I dare you find the key in that phrase! By taking it out of conventional harmony for a moment, Iconis gives the phrase an other-worldly, unsettling feeling. The music itself is telling us there is something very wrong here...

By the time we get to the end of "The Squip Song," we've lost control of key and meter (3/4, 4/4, 5/8), and it sounds like what I can only describe as Horror Rock. By the time we get to the end, this story no longer feels like a romantic comedy. Something else is going on here...

I notice in the score that Michael always has the most "fun" music, because he's the only character in the show (okay, maybe Michael and Christine) who aren't fucked up. Michael is a happy guy, content with life as it is. We first meet him, listening to, and then singing in the style of, Bob Marley. Later, in "Two-Player Game," Michael gets a very cool groove in the "Guys like us" section. The music is telling us that Michael is relatively well-adjusted and happy. For now.

But maybe the most fun part of "Two-Player Game" is the freakishly authentic, video-game-inspired music, lovingly and deliciously orchestrated by Charlie Rosen (leader of The 8-Bit Big Band, BTW). We don't know it yet, but this song tells us how the story ends.

Michael's Act II showstopper, "Michael in the Bathroom" is one of those songs that we hear too many times, and we stop hearing the lyrics. Listen to these lyrics. They're subtle, honest, and beautifully crafted. And Iconis does a beautiful thing with this music -- it's still got a touch of the bouncy, happy music Michael sang in Act I, but here it's slower, not bouncy anymore, not happy. And the chorus of the song almost discards the beat, with just long chords under the vocal line, slowly picking the beat up again. Michael hasn't lost his beat -- his life force -- entirely, but it's not what it once was...

And the bridge of "Michael in the Bathroom" is not far from a musical nervous breakdown. Then, as Michael begins the final chorus, he can't even say the words, "Michael in the Bathroom" -- the band takes the line for him, and then he joins back in again. It's such an emotional moment, for this guy whose earlier songs were so joyous, and it's the way Iconis uses music that delivers that.

The show's title song is under-girded by aggressive, driving 16th notes -- the score is marked "Surf Rock." Later, in the song, when the Squip is playing Cyrano for Jeremy, the music turns to tango (marked "The Squip Tango"), underlining the absurd phoniness of the moment. And then, when  Brooke invites him with "Do You Wanna Ride?" the music changes to a seductive blues. And again, at the end of this song, we slide in and out of the key. Something's still wrong here... and so much shit is going on!

The last scene of the show is almost entirely underscored, working in a few short reprises along the way. This is the climax of this thriller, and the music does so much of the heavy lifting, telling us so much about these kids and their emotions, in ways that they can't articulate themselves -- and also creating suspense in the same way horror movie scores do.

There's much more going on in this terrific score, but this is a pretty good sampling. Joe Iconis is not just a songwriter; he's a dramatist. All the best theatre songwriters are. It's what makes shows worth working on and what makes them so powerful for audiences.

People connect to this show in a profound way. I can't wait to see how our audiences react to everything. Some things about our show are like the New York production, and some things are fairly different. We'll see what the hardcore fans think...

We open next week, and the actors are finding such wonderful, surprising, honest moments. It's a real treat to watch them work.

If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, do it now! This is already the second biggest presale in New Line's history, and we expect every performance will sell out.

Woohoooo!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

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