#anais mitchell

Hadestown (2016, NYTW) cast and crew performance at the inauguration of MTV's Beyond the Wall installation in October 2016. Photos sourced from Getty Images.

to which Hades responds: "As long as I am king, as long as I am Hades, I will not show even the smallest bit of pity for this dreamer as it will infect my citizens with senseless wishes and topple everything I've built."

to which Persephone responds: "Who gives a shit about your king's logic? The boy doesn't care, can't you see how much he yearns for his lover? Can't you see how beautifully simple that is?"

to which Hades responds: "How dare you pity this mere boy! What about me? How long must I burn in bed every night like a bird on a spit atop your pity for these humans that causes you to abandon me every year?"

to which Persephone responds: "As long as I am your wife, as long as I am Persephone and you are Hades, yes the people on earth must face the hardships of winter as it is my duty to love you, but it is just as much my duty to bring them life, for the sun never stops rising and time just goes on."

to which Hades and Persephone marvel: "How long must you and I, and Orpheus and Eurydice, and the whole of the earth itself burn like a bird on a spit atop the ever turning wheel of time that is the sun? How long must we stay trapped in the same cycles that tear us apart and produce nothing but suffering, and there's nothing we gods can do about it because our quarrel always ends in a stalemate?"

all of which is conveyed within a four minute song built on a fit/pit/spit rhyme scheme that came to songwriter Anais Mitchell in a dream (source: Mitchell's book Working On a Song) which is just straight up magical and I feel like a bird on a spit burning atop how underrated this song is.

Some of my favorite songs of hers are “young man in America” “a hymn for the exiled” and “Santa fe dream”, but she has so many insanely haunting and beautiful folk songs that I’m begging people to actually listen to. The clear anti-capitalist messaging of Hadestown came from her core values, and they’re infused into most of her songs.

I’m very fascinated by the process of editing music and lyrics. I’ve always been impressed that Hadestown has kept so much of the score the same for so long, but the Persephone verse in Chant II has a lot of rewrites. Some of it is music changes but most of it is lyric changes.

Anything highlighted is a lyric change from the most recent version. Anything in brackets is a bit of music that was either cut or brought back. Anything in pencil is notes or opinions that I wrote. I found videos of all of these on tiktok and transcribed the lyrics so it may not be perfect but it’s good!!