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| re: Pasek & Paul | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 07:51 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? - EvFoDr 05:47 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
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| I've been following these writers since before they'd even graduated college -- I heard songs from their song cycle EDGES that hinted that they had a bright future ahead. I still think "In Short," linked below, is one of their best songs. But while I do think that Pasek & Paul might have the talent to pen convincing Golden Age pastiche songs, I have a feeling they don't have the patience. Because holy shit, these dudes are prolific, and yeah, they figured out a long time ago that writing good songs quickly could get them a calendar full of gigs in projects that go on to earn MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Seriously, more power to 'em. They're not just surely talented, they're now surely loaded. And good for them. So my opinion on their work probably doesn't matter a hill of beans, but when I listen to Pasek & Paul, I hear them settling. I hear repetitions of a lyric where a more ambitious writer would have flipped it and reversed it, spun a fresh rhyme, or created a surprising turn of phrase. And musically, although I do genuinely admire the way the composition feels coherent -- these songs have FLOW -- I rarely hear the music try to surprise the ear. Don't get me wrong; their talent lies in other areas. They're some of the only musical theatre writers who pen songs that almost sound so familiar and digestible on the first listen that you're surprised that no one has strung those particular notes together before. That's a rare gift. But this is why I consider Adam Guettel's writing to reflect a talent that he may have inherited from his pedigreed family: he knows how to set up expectations within the patterns of composition, then very intentionally break beyond that expectation to give us something our ear hadn't thought of. That's a melodic expectation that we enjoyed during the Golden Age, and we don't have that expectation from today's melodists. Taking it back to Pasek & Paul, if anything I feel like they intentionally try to clue you in on what to expect so nothing does surprise you. The big surprise of "Never Enough" from "The Greatest Showman" is that you don't expect the singer to take the melody quite that high, pushing her belt all the way up to the highest lyrics of "never enough!" But rather than really surprise our ear when the melody goes there, they give us that same melody in the accompaniment for the four measures prior. This is the one part of the film where they really could have written a pastiche song if they'd wanted to; the character is presented as a historic opera singer. When I saw it in the movie theater, I hadn't heard the soundtrack yet. When Ms. Lind's character's performance was approaching, I kinda figured we'd get something along the lines of "The Prayer" by Celine Dion & Andrea Boccelli, a song that wasn't exactly opera, but wasn't exactly pop. Instead, Pasek & Paul just wrote a Whitney Houston power ballad. Throwback? Yeah. But not very far back. So yeah, I don't think Pasek & Paul are very interested. I do like much of what they did on A CHRISTMAS STORY, and I give 'em points for keeping their pop instincts to a minimum. But even as a great song like "Ralphie to the Rescue" trades in some traditional musical theatre styles, it gets injected with some very contemporary rhythms. - GMB |
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| Link | "In Short" from EDGES, by Pasek & Paul, performed by Whitney Bashor |
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