Hamilton Lyrics – All Songs from the Musical

"Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording)" – Album Guide to Tracks and Key Scenes

Fresh milestones (2021–2025) — evergreen, but actually current

• 2021: Broadway returns. Hamilton resumes performances after the pandemic pause.
• 2023: The original cast recording becomes the first Broadway cast album certified Diamond.
• 2025: The cast album joins the U.S. National Recording Registry.
• 2025: A 10th anniversary year — original-cast reunion at the Tony Awards, a massive Broadway anniversary performance, and the filmed production finally hits movie theaters (with new interviews).
• 2025: Leslie Odom Jr. returns as Aaron Burr for a limited Broadway engagement — and ticket pricing becomes headline news again.

Recent developments (notable additions & changes)

• The filmed stage production — previously streaming — gets a theatrical release tied to the 10th anniversary, plus “Reuniting the Revolution” bonus interviews.
• Broadway celebrates the anniversary with alumni-heavy events and special lottery pushes (including a large $10 seat drop for an anniversary performance).
• Premium pricing spikes during the Odom return window, while lotteries and lower-priced options still exist in parallel.

Review

Can an album feel like a whole Broadway night out — lights, sweat, spinning turntable — while you’re just standing in line for coffee? Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording) pulls that trick. It’s sung-through, which means the record doesn’t “summarize” the show; it basically is the show, compressed into pure narrative sound. “Alexander Hamilton” opens like a true-crime chorus of witnesses, and the album spends two hours proving that the opening was a prophecy, not a teaser.

What makes it distinct isn’t only the hip-hop headline. It’s how the record builds character through rhythm choices. Burr glides — controlled, patient, self-protective. Hamilton attacks the beat like he’s trying to outrun his own ending. Angelica turns intellect into velocity. Eliza turns devotion into melody. King George weaponizes sweetness, like a pop song smiling while it threatens you. The cast album keeps the comedy sharp, but it never lets you forget the tragedy is already loaded in the chamber.

Short plot

Hamilton follows Alexander Hamilton from orphaned immigrant to Revolutionary aide-de-camp, to political mastermind shaping the new United States. He rises fast, writes like a man possessed, and makes enemies at the same speed. The second act tightens the screws — party politics, private mistakes, public consequences — until Hamilton and Aaron Burr collide in a duel that the opening number basically told you was coming. And then, quietly, the show hands the last word to Eliza: legacy isn’t just what you did; it’s who lives long enough to tell it.

Musical styles & themes / craft and style of the lyrics

The score moves in phases, and each style has a job. Hip-hop and battle cadences equal ambition — “My Shot” is drive, “Yorktown” is adrenaline, “The Room Where It Happens” is hunger in a three-piece suit. R&B and soul carry intimacy and regret — the record melts into ballad space when characters stop performing for the room and start confessing to themselves (“Wait For It,” “It’s Quiet Uptown”). Traditional show-tune scaffolding keeps the big ideas legible: you can feel the Broadway craft in transitions, reprises, and motifs that return like receipts.

The lyric craft is architectural. There’s almost no spoken dialogue, so rhyme has to do the work of scene, subtext, and time-jump. Miranda’s trick is to turn repetition into narrative: phrases come back, but they mean something else now. Even the “rewind” in “Satisfied” is a structural flex — the album replays an earlier moment and reveals the emotional cost hiding inside it.

How It Was Made

Behind the scenes

Hamilton starts with a biography and a beat. Lin-Manuel Miranda read Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton and heard tempo — not powdered wigs. A song became a concept (“The Hamilton Mixtape”), workshops turned it into a show, and the Public Theater run proved the gamble. By the time it hit Broadway, the creative team had fused rap-battle logic with classic musical theater engineering: recurring motifs, tightly staged transitions, and an orchestra that can swing, punch, and hush on command.

The cast album was recorded in New York in August 2015, built to play like a continuous story rather than a highlights reel. Alex Lacamoire’s music direction keeps the pit clarity intact on record, while the production team captures the energy without turning it into a live-audience souvenir. Questlove and Black Thought’s involvement matters here — not as celebrity stickers, but as signal: this record takes hip-hop sonics seriously, even while it’s still a Broadway cast album.

Production timeline (stops, starts, and the years that changed everything)

• 2008: Miranda reads Chernow’s biography and begins writing music inspired by Hamilton’s life.
• 2009: Early Hamilton material is performed publicly (the “seed” moment that fans cite as the project’s first big reveal).
• 2014: Workshop era — songs evolve, characters sharpen, and structural experiments (like the “Satisfied” rewind) become the show’s language.
• Feb 2015: Off-Broadway premiere at The Public Theater. Demand explodes.
• Jul–Aug 2015: Broadway previews begin, then the official opening follows at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
• Aug–Sep 2015: The original Broadway cast recording is captured and released, letting the wider world “see” the show through sound.
• 2016: Awards season peak: Tonys and Pulitzer-era cultural takeover. (Also: the 2016 stage performances that later become the filmed production are recorded.)
• Mar 2020: Broadway shuts down during the pandemic — Hamilton pauses with the rest of the industry.
• Jul 2020: The filmed stage production arrives on Disney+ earlier than planned — a pandemic-era release that turns the show into a living-room event.
• Sep 2021: Hamilton resumes Broadway performances.
• 2023: The cast album goes Diamond — a first for Broadway recordings.
• 2025: 10th anniversary cycle: cast reunion moments, a Broadway anniversary performance, and the filmed production finally gets a theatrical release; Leslie Odom Jr. returns for a limited run as Burr; the cast album is added to the National Recording Registry.

Adaptations

• Filmed stage production: Captured from 2016 performances, released on Disney+ in 2020, then brought to theaters for the 10th anniversary in 2025 (with new interview material).
• The Hamilton Mixtape: A separate pop/hip-hop reinterpretation project that treats the musical as source material — like fanfiction, but with charting artists.
• Books and “making-of” media: Companion publishing and behind-the-scenes material deepen the lyric analysis and staging logic for fans who want the blueprint.
• Global productions: Long-running Broadway plus tours and international stagings keep the show’s sound circulating even when the original cast changes.

Tracks & Scenes

Hamilton is almost entirely sung, so each track is a scene. Below are key album moments plus a couple of trailer-era cues that remind you how the score gets re-cut for new audiences.

“Alexander Hamilton” (Original Broadway Cast)

Where it plays:

Act I opener. Burr steps forward as narrator and the ensemble introduces Hamilton as a legend-in-the-making — and a dead man walking. On stage, characters appear like witnesses at a trial, each dropping a detail that will matter later. The number ends with the story already accelerating, like the musical can’t wait to catch up to its own myth.

Why it matters:

It establishes the show’s main obsession: who controls the narrative. Musically, it plants motifs (“shot,” legacy, writing) that keep returning as emotional alarms.

“My Shot” (Lin-Manuel Miranda & Company)

Where it plays:

Early Act I, in a tavern scene that evolves into a mission statement. Hamilton meets Laurens, Lafayette, and Mulligan; verses stack like a cypher, then become a revolutionary vow. Burr is present but wary — the song makes their philosophical split audible.

Why it matters:

This is Hamilton’s engine in one track: ambition as breathless rhythm. Every later callback to “my shot” carries both career hunger and the shadow of literal gunfire.

“The Schuyler Sisters” (Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Jasmine Cephas Jones & Company)

Where it plays:

Still early Act I, on a buzzing New York street. The sisters stride through the crowd, scanning the city for intellect, romance, and possibility. The ensemble swirls around them like the city itself — fast, loud, alive.

Why it matters:

It introduces the show’s emotional power trio and sets up Angelica’s internal conflict that detonates later in “Satisfied.”

“Helpless” (Phillipa Soo & Company)

Where it plays:

Mid Act I, Eliza narrates falling for Hamilton, framed like a pop-R&B love story. The scene plays as a bright rush: flirtation, quick decisions, and that feeling of stepping into a future before you’ve fully read the terms.

Why it matters:

It’s the romance at maximum light — which makes the later betrayal and grief hit harder. The album gives you the “before” in clean melody.

“Satisfied” (Renée Elise Goldsberry & Company)

Where it plays:

Angelica’s wedding-toast showstopper that snaps into a literal rewind. The music reverses, dancers retrace steps, and we relive the “Helpless” moment from Angelica’s point of view. Her internal monologue runs faster than the party ever did.

Why it matters:

It’s narrative engineering. The album re-contextualizes earlier joy as quiet sacrifice, without adding a single new “plot point” — just perspective.

“Wait For It” (Leslie Odom Jr. & Company)

Where it plays:

Act I, Burr finally stops narrating and confesses. The stage action cools; the groove steadies. Burr describes patience as survival, even as envy leaks through the seams.

Why it matters:

This is Burr’s thesis, and it’s deadly. The song explains why he resents Hamilton — and why he can’t stop watching him.

“Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)” (Company)

Where it plays:

Late Act I, the war climax. The stage becomes a battlefield collage: volleys, formations, bodies dropping into the beat. The surrender lands like a bass hit — victory, then exhaustion.

Why it matters:

It pays off the revolutionary promises and pivots the story from war heroics to political warfare.

“The Room Where It Happens” (Leslie Odom Jr. & Company)

Where it plays:

Act II, Burr narrates the closed-door dinner compromise. He’s outside, looking in, watching power get manufactured in real time. By the end, he stops being a spectator and demands entry — physically and morally.

Why it matters:

It’s the album’s pivot point: desire becomes action. Musically, it fuses show-tune razzle with political cynicism — and somehow makes both dance.

“Burn” (Phillipa Soo)

Where it plays:

Act II, after public scandal detonates. Eliza is alone with letters — history in paper form — and she decides what survives. The orchestration feels like it’s holding its breath; every phrase lands like ash.

Why it matters:

It’s agency, not just heartbreak. The album turns a private decision into the loudest silence in the show.

“It’s Quiet Uptown” (Company)

Where it plays:

Late Act II, after Philip’s death. The world narrows: a street, a bench, a couple trying to exist inside grief. The ensemble speaks in hushed harmonies, like the city has lowered its voice out of respect.

Why it matters:

It’s the record’s emotional reset — the moment the show admits ambition can’t outwrite loss.

“Finale (Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story)” (Company)

Where it plays:

The final scene. After the duel, the narrative baton passes to Eliza, then expands outward: children, institutions, memory, erasure. The company stands as if giving testimony, asking the audience to decide what legacy even means.

Why it matters:

It reframes the entire album: not “Hamilton’s story,” but “the story people choose to preserve.”

Trailer cue: “Hamilton | Official Trailer | In Theaters September 5” (2025 theatrical trailer edit)

Where it plays:

The 2025 theatrical trailer cuts footage of the filmed stage production with bold hooks from the score — the kind of edits that treat Broadway like blockbuster cinema. You hear familiar vocal punches, but the pacing is trailer-fast: quick rises, hard stops, big title-card drops.

Why it matters:

It’s proof the album’s structure is cinematic. The show already thinks in montage; the trailer just makes it literal.

Notes & Trivia

• The album is long because the show is. Hamilton is sung-through, so the cast recording works like a full narrative artifact, not a souvenir.
• “Satisfied” doesn’t just repeat an earlier moment — it rewrites what you thought you watched. Same party, different emotional math.
• King George’s songs are comedic candy on the surface, but they also do serious political recap work between heavier sequences.
• The pandemic interruption created an unusual “two-life” arc: stage phenomenon first, then a mass-access filmed version that reintroduced the score to millions.
• In 2025, anniversary programming and theatrical distribution made the show feel newly present again — not nostalgia, more like a re-launch.

Reception & Quotes

The cast album didn’t just follow the show’s success; it amplified it. Critics praised its ability to communicate plot and personality without stage visuals, and fans treated it like a pop record — memorizing verses, sharing lyrical annotations, and using songs as emotional shorthand. Commercially, it became a once-in-a-generation outlier for Broadway recordings, and culturally it kept expanding: streaming peaks, viral revivals, and educational afterlives.

Awards & recognition (musical + album)

• Musical: 11 Tony Awards (including Best Musical) from 16 nominations; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2016).
• Album: Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album; later achieved Diamond certification (RIAA).
• Preservation: Added to the U.S. National Recording Registry in 2025.

“This is music that wants to do everything, and succeeds.” — The Atlantic on the cast album

“The recording manages to audibly convey the incredible highs and lows of Hamilton’s story.” — British Theatre, via a BroadwayWorld roundup

“America needs Hamilton in a way that it almost never needs a musical.” — NPR Music coverage of the album’s early stream

“A landmark American musical.” — Pulitzer Prize Board citation

Availability is broad: the album streams everywhere and exists in multiple physical editions. In 2025, the filmed production’s theatrical push also generated new trailer edits and interview extras, refreshing attention on the original recordings.

Interesting Facts

• Hamilton’s “voice printing” is intentional: each character’s rhythmic style is character psychology you can hear.
• The show’s most famous motifs behave like receipts — phrases return later as evidence, not nostalgia.
• The 2020 filmed release made Hamilton a “shared viewing” event for people who’d never step into a Broadway theater.
• Anniversary programming in 2025 leaned into alumni culture — treating the show like a long-running band with eras of members.
• The album’s Registry selection is rare air for musical theater recordings, placing it alongside canon-level American audio history.
• Ticket-access strategies now live in tension: extreme premiums at the top end, lotteries and occasional lower-cost entry points at the bottom.

Technical Info

• Title: Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording)
• Year: 2015
• Type: Cast album for the Broadway musical Hamilton
• Composer / lyricist: Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Music direction / orchestration: Alex Lacamoire
• Producers (album): Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alex Lacamoire, Bill Sherman; executive producers include Questlove and Black Thought
• Recording context: Captured in August 2015 in New York, designed to preserve the show’s narrative flow
• Selected notable placements: Songs reused and re-cut in multiple trailers; the filmed production’s releases (2020 streaming; 2025 theatrical) re-sparked chart and fan attention
• Chart / certification notes: Diamond-certified cast album (RIAA); selected for the National Recording Registry (2025)

Key Contributors

Questions & Answers

What’s new in the Hamilton universe in 2025?

Three big things: the filmed stage production gets a theatrical release for the 10th anniversary (with new “Reuniting the Revolution” interviews), the original cast reunites for high-profile anniversary performances, and Leslie Odom Jr. returns as Burr for a limited Broadway run.

How expensive were tickets in 2024–2025, and what about 2026–2027?

In 2024–2025, Broadway overall averaged around the low-$100s in some weeks, but Hamilton often sits higher than the pack. Playbill noted Hamilton’s average ticket hovering around $199 in 2025, while official reporting and coverage also highlighted that premium seats for specific performances could surge as high as $1,525.50. There are still $10 lottery options, and some tickets start far below premium levels depending on date and availability. For 2026–2027, there’s no fixed “typical” price — Broadway uses dynamic pricing — so the most reliable move is to monitor the official ticket seller and compare multiple dates.

Is the cast album basically the whole show?

Pretty much. Hamilton is sung-through, so the recording carries the plot, the jokes, the politics, and the emotional turns. You miss some staging magic, but the story still lands — hard.

Why does “Satisfied” feel like a magic trick on record?

Because it’s a narrative rewind done musically. The album revisits earlier material, but the perspective shift changes everything — the same party becomes a different story.

Why did the Library of Congress add the cast album to the National Recording Registry?

The Registry recognizes recordings with cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance. The Hamilton cast album didn’t just document a hit show; it became a major American audio artifact — crossing genres, charts, and generations.

Sources: Library of Congress / National Recording Registry coverage (AP), Playbill, Broadway League grosses reporting, Hamilton official site (lottery and ticket info), Reuters, People, Entertainment Weekly, Wikipedia (Hamilton musical/album/film), IBDB, BroadwayDirect, The Atlantic, NPR, Pulitzer Prize Board.