#ben pratt

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA & BEN PLATT - FOUND/TONIGHT

[5.14]

Miranda/Platt doesn't have much of a ring to it. Miranda Platt, however, sounds like she's a lawyer who moonlights as a country singer...

Stephen Eisermann: Ben Platt has an incredible fucking voice. The power just oozes out of every note he sings, so it's bizarre for me to even write that Lin is the MVP of this song, but it's just so goddamn hard to ignore that tío sincerity that Lin has mastered. And, no, actually, mastered is the wrong word - Lin so perfectly captures the essence of that tío because he is that uncle that has a decent, cute little voice and sings at too many family gatherings and always tells you, mijo I could've been big, ni sabes. Except he did make it big, but he didn't lose his humility along the way, so now everything he sings is so much more believable, lovable, authentic, and inspiring because not many tíos get to where he is. Despite this song simply being a mash-up of two show tunes, it works because these two, especially Lin, believe what they sing and the message they hope to convey, so it moves from nice, I guess to que suave, ya tenemos otra razón para seguir apoyando al actor, ese (because Latin parents barely remember actors names unless the appear in novelas). [9]

Tobi Tella: As a forever theatre kid, lover of Lin-Manuel Miranda, and lover of the cause this single was for, I should support this wholeheartedly. But Dear Evan Hansen is a supremely lazy musical, and this is just a bad medley that sounds like it was stitched together by a bored 13-year-old Ben Platt fangirl on YouTube. Do better, Lin! [4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The problem with reviewing musical theater songs on a singles platform is that none of them really are singles. They're works that only make real sense in context-- any appreciation to be gained for the songs as individual pieces is largely incidental to their overall goals. Taken alone, the individual motifs and structures of a single song are weaker than their emergent whole. That's also the problem with "Found/Tonight." [2]

Katie Gill: As someone who finds both Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen MASSIVELY overrated, this song doesn't do much for me. It hits all the beats of the "we're going to cover this song for a charity single" trope: sad strings, taking something you know and reworking it, so much emoting, etc. I appreciate the fact that it is a charity single and that the proceeds are going to the March for Our Lives charity, but the complete glurge of the song constantly battles against the good intentions. And honestly? Putting poor Lin-Manuel Miranda next to Ben Platt shows that LMM is a much stronger songwriter than he is performer. Ben Platt blows him out of the water, emoting the hell out of this song and bringing it to new levels that Lin-Manuel Miranda tries (and fails) to reach. [5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: For its first 25 seconds, "Found/Tonight" sounds legitimately inspiring. Then Lin-Manuel Miranda comes in to sour the entire affair, reminding you that sounding shamelessly ham-fisted is what he does best. [2]

Alfred Soto: I'm glad they're persuaded their children will think this tune is important enough to discuss. [5]

Joshua Copperman: I cannot separate Hamilton from Lin-Manuel's SNL performance where he sings "never gonna be president now" to a picture of Donald Trump, who had hosted the previous year. Even listening to the songs from the musical makes me cringe; it's a reminder of where I thought America was headed in 2016, yet all I hear now is the America that any given leftist podcast consumer will remind you (unprompted) never existed. Enough Lisa Simpson-ing, though: on paper, this seems like more of the same from the Hamilton crew. "You Will Be Found" is built on dramatic irony, the Pasek & Paul pop that made "This Is Me" so cloying given a darker twist, but out of context is uplifting. Meanwhile, "The Story of Tonight" is one of the most Hamilton-y Hamilton songs, complete with the invocation "stories" and history having its eyes on you. As the song opens, Platt and Miranda sing each others' verses, which is both corny and canny, just like Hamilton itself. But as it goes on, as Miranda's propensity for interconnecting his songs infects Platt, the sincerity outweighs the cleverness. By the time an unusually restrained Miranda is singing "all I see is sky for forever" it's hard to stay cynical. It's certainly possible to respond to "Raise a glass to freedom/something they can never take away" with "actually they can." Maybe "Found/Tonight" hit me because the song reminds me of when I could be optimistic about my future, or my country's future, or basically anything. But the message is a bit deeper than that: blind optimism may breed complacency, but so does blind nihilism. The song was created for March Of Our Lives, and it always feels so hard to tell whether all these protests and op-eds are actually changing anything, because the people who have the power to change anything won't change anything. If that's the case, continuing to exist is as powerful a countermeasure as anything else. To quote someone else who ultimately chose sincerity over cynicism: "If you can't survive, just try." [9]

(Watch the video interview here)

(Watch the video interview here)