THE DECEMBERISTS RELEASE “BEN FRANKLIN’S SONG” FIRST IN A SERIES OF NEW HAMILTON MUSIC
December 15, 2017
DOWNLOAD/STREAM “BEN FRANKLIN’S SONG” HERE
Yesterday, Hamilton creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, announced ‘Hamildrops’ – a new Hamilton project releasing new songs every month through December 2018. BEN FRANKLIN’S SONG, written by Miranda and Colin Meloy (of the Decemberists), was the first of the ‘Hamildrops’ tracks released at midnight everywhere last night.
Miranda reached out to Meloy to put music to a set of lyrics that had been written for Hamilton but had never been used: a first-person introduction to one of the US’s founding fathers, Mr. Benjamin Franklin. Funnily enough, he said he’d imagined Franklin singing in a sort of Decemberist-y way.
As fans of Miranda and Hamilton, The Decemberists were thrilled to be a part of this collaboration. Meloy, reflecting on the writing process, said “It didn’t take long, really, for the music to come about — the lyrics immediately lent themselves to an outsized melody.”
“It absolutely blew me away,” Miranda tweeted. “They brought Ben Franklin to life”.