Hamilton: An American Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording) Tracklist
The cast recording to the hit Broadway musical, Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda blends musical theater, hip-hop, rap, R&B, jazz, pop, and American history to dramatize the life of founding father Alexander Hamilton, based on the biography by Ron Chernow. Despite depicting historical figures, the show practices colorblind (more like purposefully colorful) casting. As countless promotional materials state, Hamilton aims to depict “America then, as told by America now.”
This record was the first album to ever receive a 5 star review on billboard.com and it went on to win the Grammy in 2016 for best musical theater album. The Broadway production won 11 Tonys, including Best Musical, and the book won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
In an interview with American Theater, Miranda said:
There’s lots of [Easter eggs] in Hamilton. I don’t want to give them away, because I feel like Rap Genius is going to have a field day finding them.
Miranda has also tweeted his approval of the annotations:
The Hamilton production team embedded the Genius-annotated lyrics on their official website. The New York Observer even posted a news story about the annotation project.
Want to help out with annotating this album? Come join us:
The project page lists the project’s supervising editors and overall goals.
The forum thread is for hashing out annotations with other users, or general conversation about the album.
The Hamilton Apocrypha album contains extras, cut songs, and meta posts related to the show as a whole.
“Hamilton: An American Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording)” Q&A
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Translations
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How is the album structured?
Disc 1, Act 1: tracks 1 to 23
Disc 2, Act 2: tracks 24 to 46 -
How much has the album sold?
According to Billboard, the album has sold 1.285 million copies in the US.
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Will a Disney+ version be released?
There is no indication Disney plans on releasing an album in conjunction with their release of the performance for several reasons. Firstly, it would distract fans from listening to the original Broadway album. Secondly, the Disney+ stage recording uses the same, original cast of the album. Lastly, Atlantic Records made a post advertising the 2015 album the day before the release of the Disney+ recording instead of teasing a new album.
In addition, to make the musical more family-friendly to qualify for a PG-13 rating instead of an R one, Lin-Manuel Miranda encourages viewers to “sync up” the original album to hear the f-bombs found in “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)” and “Washington On Your Side.” The ones in “Say No To This” and “Washington On Your Side” were already incomplete or censored in the script and lyrics, making them not count toward Disney+’s one use of the word.
Both of these urges to listen to the original album, in addition to the other indicators listed, infers there won’t be a “soundtrack version” of the musical.
