EPIC: Cut Songs Lyrics – All Songs from the Musical

"EPIC: The Musical — Cut Songs" Soundtrack: Unofficial, Raw, Addicting.

Background & Context

EPIC began life as a TikTok experiment—snippets of a Homeric fever-dream pumped full of trap drums and choir walls. Jorge Rivera-Herrans (everybody online just calls him “Jay”) drip-fed the internet sagas from late 2022 onward, then swept the bits that no longer served the core narrative into a growing digital dust-pan. Those orphans—thirty-plus demos, rewrites, goofy side-quests—quickly gathered a cult of their own. Playlists bloomed on Spotify, YouTube super-cuts hit half-million views, and suddenly people were debating the emotional canon of songs that technically never existed. If the official sagas are Jay’s marble statues, the Cut Songs are the cracked sketches in charcoal. No polished marble here—just fingerprints, impulse, discarded melodies still humming with static electricity. And because there’s no label-stamped release, the “album” lives as a living collage: one fan’s playlist ends with “Royal Wisdom Burst,” another slips “Man of the House (Eurylochus Cut)” between “Luck Runs Out” and “Polyphemus.” It feels punk, almost zine-like—history written on the fly.

Production Stories

Some cuts were born from brutal math—narrative pacing, vocal range clashes, runtime. Others vanished because Jay second-guessed a lyric four months later at 2 a.m. and never reopened the session. He’s joked in livestreams that certain demos make him “want to yeet the chorus off a cliff,” yet he still uploads tiny stems to keep the community in the loop. Half a million followers treat those stems like archaeological shards. Behind the scenes, collaborators drop in and out like commuters. Teagan Earley belts “Full Speed Ahead,” Armando Julián growls through “Luck Runs Out,” and Barbara Wangui slips velvet harmonies over “Belong to You.” Sessions often happen remotely—Jay in Puerto Rico tracking guitars at 3 a.m. while a vocalist in London hunts down Wi-Fi strong enough for 48-kHz stems. Glitches become texture; you can almost hear MacBook fans whirring beneath string pads.

Musical Styles & Themes

Nothing about Cut Songs obeys a single genre fence. One moment you’re in an orchestral swell straight from a Hans Zimmer dream, the next you’re smacked with hyper-pop glitches or a whispered folk bridge. Jay’s ethos: every character deserves a timbral signature. Hypnos gets sleepy lofi filters, Athena soars on pristine piano arpeggios, Poseidon stomps in with sub-bass that rattles car doors. The heterogeneity can feel chaotic until you notice the connective tissue—a repeating four-note “fate motif” surfacing like a Greek chorus in 808 form. Lyrically the cuts veer darker than the main sagas. Heroes beg gods for forgiveness, monsters sob about loneliness, Odysseus admits he’s “just a man” before the beat drops out entirely. Imperfection became the through-line; these are drafts that know they’re drafts and wear the bruises proudly.

Track Highlights

• “God Games” [Cut Ver.] — opens with cathedral organ, then snaps into trap hi-hats and a choir shouting Latin fragments. It’s Athena meet Kanye 2013, in the middle of a thunderstorm.
• “Ismarus” — almost sea-shanty, almost prog-rock. Jay’s vocals clip red at the chorus, but that crackle makes the guilt thicker when Odysseus razes the Thracian coast.
• “Olive Tree” — six-eight time, finger-picked nylon guitar, Penelope’s lullaby to an empty bed. Harmonies so close you feel her breath.
• “Different Beast” — glitch-hop snarls, Odysseus trash-talks the Cyclops over detuned brass stabs. It’s petty, glorious, ridiculous.
• “Storm” [Cut Ver.] — string ostinato crescendos into white-noise whoosh; Jay scrapped it for pacing but fans swear it’s the best depiction of Poseidon’s rage.
• “Pick Me” — suitors chant a schoolyard taunt over disco-funk bass. Sharp, hilarious, never meant to leave the drafts folder.

Reactions & Social Proof

“Jay needs to make a saga of only the cut songs!” — Reddit user 575hfd, Jan 2025

“Just so everyone knows, the cut songs are not canon.” — YouTube commenter AstroGlitter, Feb 2025

“If newcomers hear ‘gimme that baby and I’ll yeet it off a tower’ first, I’d be embarrassed—but also, low-key in love.” — TikTok stitch by Stiorra100, Apr 2025

Streaming numbers back the chatter: compilations on YouTube regularly climb past 300 k views; unofficial Spotify playlists cough up tens of thousands of monthly listeners despite algorithm purgatory. Critics in college papers call the collection “a post-modern footnote that threatens to outshine the parent text.” Yet the dominant critique is exactly its charm: no cohesion. One reviewer likened the experience to “scrolling through a composer’s diary while the ink’s still wet.”

Technical Details

• Release status: Unofficial fan compilation (tracks published 2022 – 2025)
• Genre palette: Musical-theatre pop, orchestral hip-hop, alt-rock, hyper-pop
• Total length: Approx. 1 hr 42 min (varies by playlist)
• Label imprint: Winion Entertainment LLC (self-released demos)
• Chart impact: N/A (individual demos trended on TikTok and hit iTunes Musical Theatre chart peaks)
• Core personnel: Jorge Rivera-Herrans (writer/producer/vocals), featured vocalists Teagan Earley, Armando Julián, Barbara Wangui & others

FAQ

Will there ever be an official Cut Songs album on streaming?

Jay occasionally teases a “Not-So-EPIC” mixtape but insists legal clearances and personal taste stand in the way. For now, playlists reign.

Are Cut Songs considered canon to EPIC’s story?

No. By Jay’s own words, they’re alternate drafts—interesting lore snapshots but not plot gospel.

Why do some tracks abruptly stop or distort?

Many demos were recorded on the road or live-tweaked during Twitch streams; clipping, sudden endings, and missing verses are artifacts of that open-kitchen workflow.