Although it's certainly not the first Broadway song to take on a very different meaning outside the show -- Everything's Coming Up Roses is an example that immediately springs to mind -- I also find the way that You Will Be Found has become a positive anthem to be unsettling. In the show, I found it heartbreaking because Evan is making up a fantasy that he desperately wishes was true but has no relation to his stark reality: he doesn't have anyone come running, no friend to carry him. No friend found him lying broken on the ground. He has no friends. Except for his mother, he really is alone.
But Pasek and Paul have embraced the "uplifting" interpretation of the song to the point that they have an illustrated hardcover book of the lyrics, which, according to the Amazon blurb, offers a "message of hope" and a "reminder...that, as the song says, you are not alone." Well, unless you're Evan Hansen until the last minute of Act I. |
