I Hope I Get It Lyrics - Chorus Line, A

Song Overview

Review and Highlights

Quick summary

• First song in the show - a full-company audition where counting, breath, and panic share the mic.
• Music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante; conceived, directed, and choreographed by Michael Bennett with Bob Avian.
• Recorded June 1975 at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio for the Original Broadway Cast album, produced for records by Goddard Lieberson.
• The track anchors the stage and the 1985 film adaptation - you hear the stakes before you know the names.
• Later revivals and international editions keep reshaping the pulse while preserving the audition-as-drama frame.

Creation History

There is a reason the piece lands with a thud of recognition. The show grew out of taped sessions where dancers told their stories, and this opener turns warm-ups into theatre. The first voice we hear is the director barking counts - a line of bodies trying to remember what comes next. The musical language borrows the sound of a studio: piano sketching the pattern, drums clicking time, brass slashing in for emphasis. The lyric keeps the phrases short, as if breath itself is scarce. When individual anxieties surface - Tricia’s plea, Paul’s philosophical aside - they cut through the ensemble like spotlights. In four or five minutes, the piece sets the terms: this is a work about workers, about the job of making yourself visible.

The recording has its own mythology. A legendary cast album house captured the session shortly after the Broadway transfer, and the producer of record was a titan of cast recordings. The take feels like theatre caught hot, not polished into porcelain. You can hear the zing of consonants, the quick inhales, the slight grit of a live room. It suits the material. Even on headphones, you feel like you’re in a studio watching bodies try to earn tomorrow’s rent.

Key takeaways

1. A true curtain-raiser - story and sweat arrive together.
2. Ensemble function with solo punctures - Tricia and Paul’s brief breaks widen the narrative lens.
3. Rhythm as character - counts, pivots, and step lists are the vocabulary of lives defined by rehearsal.
4. Repetition builds tension - the mantra tightens the vise rather than releasing it.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

We start mid-combination. Zach, the director, drills the line. The room is run by numbers - five, six, seven, eight - but the subtext is money, pride, and the thin border between confidence and collapse. Dancers fall out of step, self-criticize in harmony, and negotiate the strange intimacy of the cattle call. Ten seconds after we meet them, they confess what they won’t confess to anyone else: I need this job. The scene is simple - a routine repeated, a crowd cut down - but the number turns repetition into story. Each cycle reveals a little more fright and a little more resolve.

Song Meaning

This is a hymn to trying under pressure. The piece is not a victory lap; it is a meditation on how people keep moving when they can’t tell if the person in charge can see them. The chorus asks a blunt math question - how many boys, how many girls - while the inner monologues ask existential ones. The sound is pop-theatre built for clarity: percussion a hair forward so the feet land cleanly, vowels bright and un-muddy so the words cut through choreography. The mood is urgent, not tragic, and the message is the unglamorous truth of the profession: courage looks like showing up, counting out loud, and risking a no.

Annotations

“Let’s do the whole combination facing away from the mirror.”

That is a rite of passage. Dancers rehearse in mirrors, but they perform without them. Turning away is the moment you trade self-monitoring for muscle memory. The line is standard studio practice, and it also plays as a metaphor: stop checking yourself and commit.

“A-five, six, seven, eight!”

It is the click-track of musical theatre - the count-in that marries bodies to band. The opener weaponizes the count by making it part of the character’s thought stream. When the count starts to speed or compress, you feel panic in the ribcage.

“How many boys, how many girls?”

That question shrinks lives into casting math. The ratio shifts by production, but the lyric nails the bluntness of the decision tree. It is not personal until it is.

[Tricia] “I really need this job... I’ve got to get this job.”

A wicked bit of foreshadowing. Tricia gets the first solo of the night and then disappears in the cuts. The show is telling you, kindly, not to fall for the illusion that merit guarantees outcome. In an audition story, the most earnest plea might be the first to go.

“Stage left”

Stage geography from the actor’s view, not the audience’s. Tiny detail, huge effect: the stage is their workplace, and the terms belong to them, not to us.

Paul: “What should I try to be?”

That question is as hard as any pirouette. We learn later that Paul has rebuilt himself in layers, and even his “real self” involves performance. The line lands different when you know there is history he cannot easily say out loud.

Genre and engine

Call it Broadway pop with a rehearsal-room spine. Piano sketches the figure; drum kit keeps the heart rate up; brass snaps like a coach’s clap. The arrangement leaves space for breathy ensemble punctuation and for sudden solo focus. You can chart the scene’s energy by the density of consonants - as diction gets crisper, adrenaline spikes.

Emotional arc

Opening panic, mid-song self-flagellation, and a late pivot to cautious hope. When the company sings “I think I’ve got it,” you hear how fragile belief can sound. Then the mantra returns. The audition is not over; neither is the song’s argument with fear.

Key Facts

• Artist: Original Broadway Cast of A Chorus Line
• Featured: Ensemble, with spot solos for Tricia and Paul
• Composer: Marvin Hamlisch
• Lyricist: Edward Kleban
• Producer: Goddard Lieberson (cast album - produced for records)
• Release Date: October 1975 (album issue)
• Genre: Broadway pop - audition sequence
• Instruments: Piano, drum kit, bass, brass, reeds, ensemble voices
• Label: Columbia Masterworks
• Mood: urgent, hungry, self-scrutinizing
• Length: approximately 4:59 on common album timings; revival and film variants run longer
• Track #: 1
• Language: English
• Album: A Chorus Line - Original Broadway Cast Recording
• Music style: ensemble chant over driving 4-4 groove
• Poetic meter: syllabic chant with conversational iambs

Canonical Entities & Relations

• Michael Bennett - conceived and directed the musical; co-choreographer with Bob Avian.
• Marvin Hamlisch - composed the score; conducted the recording sessions.
• Edward Kleban - wrote the lyrics; voice of the audition’s inner monologue.
• Goddard Lieberson - produced the original cast recording for Columbia Masterworks.
• New York Shakespeare Festival - originating producer under Joseph Papp.
• Sam S. Shubert Theatre - Broadway house where the show opened in July 1975.
• Columbia 30th Street Studio - Manhattan church-turned-studio where the album was recorded.
• Jonathan Tunick, Bill Byers, Hershy Kay - orchestrators for the stage production.

Questions and Answers

What job does this opener do that a typical overture might have done?

It makes the overture diegetic. Instead of a medley, we watch a work call. The sound of the show is the sound of an audition room - counts, breath, and hard consonants.

Why do the counts feel so dramatic?

Rhythm equals consequence. The count-in is not neutral; if you miss it, you are literally out of step and, maybe, out of work. The band and the body are on the same clock.

Why hand early solos to Tricia and Paul?

To show range. Tricia’s plea represents the unvarnished economic stakes; Paul’s aside introduces the show’s deeper identity questions. Two sides of the same risk.

Is the number the same in the film?

Yes in function, different in texture. The 1985 movie amps camera movement and keeps the opener as the audience’s first immersion in the audition chaos.

Was this track ever a single or a chart hit?

No. Cast albums are the product format here. The 1975 album did chart modestly; the song itself lived on stage, on LP, and later in the film adaptation.

Do revivals alter the feel?

They keep the skeleton and trim the edges. The 2006 Broadway revival leaned into a brisker tempo and bright, clicky diction. Same ritual, slightly different pulse.

Are there language versions?

Yes. A Spanish recording from a major Spanish production includes a version titled “Espero Conseguirlo,” which preserves the structure and swaps in a clean Spanish lyric.

Why does the mantra never quite resolve?

Because auditions rarely do. The number ends with the job still uncertain. That tension primes the rest of the evening.

How does the opener foreshadow later songs?

It introduces the show’s pattern - public formality punctured by private confession - which pays off in solo sequences like “What I Did for Love.”

Is there a canonical live TV moment to seek out?

The original company performing the opener at the Tonys is the textbook example of how the number translates outside the theatre.

Awards and Chart Positions

The show around it became a trophy magnet and the album had a documented footprint, even if the opener itself was never a single. The cast recording was nominated at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards in the cast-album category for 1975 releases, while another blockbuster musical took the prize that night. The production itself became a Tony juggernaut and later claimed the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. As for the album’s market presence, it reached the U.S. albums chart and registered in Australia’s Kent chart book.

How to Sing I Hope I Get It

Think like a dancer first, singer second - then marry the two. The opener’s trick is keeping diction intelligible while your body is “moving” inside the sound.

• Tempo: commonly sits in a brisk 4-4. Revival recordings clock around the low 140s BPM; some analyses of earlier cuts show a half-time reading near the low 80s that doubles in feel. Film and other editions can push into the 150s.
• Key: varies by edition. Revival tracks are often in A major; the film soundtrack sits higher or lower by scene. Conductors will choose the best fit for their company.
• Time signature: 4-4, with straight-eighths articulation favored for clarity.
• Range and voicing: ensemble SATB with mid-range solos - place your sound forward for articulation, not width.
• Style: Broadway pop with a rehearsal-room frame - bright vowels, crisp consonants, and rhythmic precision.

Step-by-step HowTo

1. Map the counts. Speak-snap the combinations before singing. If you can say “step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch” in perfect time, you can sing over it without rushing.
2. Dial in diction. Keep consonants at the front of the lips. On “God, I hope I get it,” anchor the final t as a rhythmic event, not a swallowed afterthought.
3. Breath like a mover. Short, frequent inhales between list items. Avoid huge breaths that slow your internal metronome.
4. Flow and phrasing. Treat the mantra as waves. Each repetition grows in intensity. Avoid scooping - go for clean, stepped intervals.
5. Accent choices. Put energy on count words and job words - “how many,” “boys,” “girls,” “job,” “show.” That shifts attention where the story lives.
6. Ensemble blend. In group passages, lighten vibrato and match vowel shapes. The song reads best when the choir sounds like one mind with many anxieties.
7. Mic technique. If amplified, hold your placement consistent and avoid plosives. Back off slightly on big unisons to let lyrics ride.
8. Common pitfalls. Rushing the list phrases, letting diction smear under movement, and over-belting the first chorus so you have nowhere to go.
9. Practice kit. Two drills: 1) speak the entire lyric in rhythm with a click at 76, then 142; 2) run a call-and-response where one leader speaks the counts and the ensemble answers with the chorus.

Additional Info

The piece is the door into a record-setting phenomenon. The musical opened in July 1975 and settled into a long run that reset Broadway math. The cast album session took place in an old church studio that had already hosted a century’s worth of landmark records. Veteran cast-album hands supervised a long day that ran late into the night - a detail reported at the time with a touch of awe. That stamina is audible on the disc.

Language travel matters here. A major Spanish production premiered in the last few years and made a full cast recording. The opener appears as “Espero Conseguirlo,” proof that the audition ritual reads across borders. The rhythm - anxious, determined - needs no translation, but the Spanish lyric lands with its own punch and opens the song to new voices and cities.

The number’s DNA also spreads into award shows and tributes. A televised performance by the original company remains a reference point for how the song plays on cameras. Years later, a Tony Awards opening medley wove its cadence into a comedy duel, a wink to how the piece has become shorthand for Broadway’s particular mix of stress and hope. And in the 2006 revival, the track’s presence on a new cast album pulled a generation into the story - a reminder that sometimes a revival’s job is simply to keep a ritual alive.

Critical shorthand has settled on a few truths. The opener is the thesis. If it lands, the evening lands. According to The New Yorker’s contemporary look at the album’s creation, the cast-album veterans treated the session like a high-wire act, and it shows. As stated in Tony Awards records, the production’s sweep that season is part of why this specific opener still feels like an ignition switch - you hear opportunity crackle and the cost of chasing it.

Sources: Masterworks Broadway; IBDB; New York Public Library; Legacy Recordings; Concord Theatricals; Craft/Concord; Tony Awards; The New Yorker; Wikipedia; CastAlbums; Discogs; SongBPM; Tunebat; Musicstax; IMDb; Movieclips.