Listen to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Bonus ‘Hamilton’ Song About Benjamin Franklin

You’ve just finished streaming Hamilton on Disney+, tears are streaming down your face as you process Eliza Hamilton’s selfless acts, and you’re finally ready to join the Hamilton fandom. Welcome! You may be five years late, but hey, not everyone had the money for the world’s most expensive Broadway show but in 2015. I get it.

If you’re looking for more Hamilton content, the good news is that there is a lot of it out there. Like the founding father he embodied on stage, Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda writes like he is running out of time. That includes several bonus tracks that never made it into the show, which were released by Miranda in 2018 as part of the “Hamildrops” series. Among those songs is the “The Ben Franklin Song,” sung from the point of view of the intellectual and inventive Founding Father who was noticeably absent from Miranda’s hip-hop musical. Miranda didn’t forget about old bifocaled Ben—he simply cut him out. Considering the musical’s runtime—which is 2 hours and 55 minutes including intermission—it’s understandable, if sad.

Miranda teased fans about the existence of the song back in 2015 in a tweetstorm, in which he revealed his dream cast for the role was Les Mis legend Colm Wilkinson and gave blanket permission for the revival to include the song when he’s dead.

Three years later, Miranda enlisted The Decemberists to record their own version of “The Ben Franklin Song,” and released it as the first in monthly series of new Hamilton-related content in 2018. (That series also included Weird Al Yankovic’s “The Hamilton Polka,” Sara Bareilles’s reprise of “Dear Theodosia,” and many more.)

“Funnily enough, he said he’d imagined Franklin singing in a sort of Decemberist-y way, whatever that means,” the band wrote in a post on their website.

If you’ve ever heard a Decemberists song before, it sounds pretty much like that. But listen closely to the lyrics, and you’ll hear that signature Miranda brand of whimsey, spirit, and historical references. Take this verse, for example, about Franklin’s reliability with the ladies: “John’s debates at the gates of Versailles / He whines and berates and awaits a reply /  As I stay up late with a succulent breast or a thigh / Alright, diplomacy happens at night.”

As much as I love The Decemberists, I’m still dying to hear Miranda’s Hamilton version of this tune, which is no doubt more in line with the tone of the show. Miranda’s dream cast may be Jean Valjean, but let me put out my own dream cast out into the universe: André De Shields of Hadestown fame. Imagine our Hermes singing about “succulent breasts” on the stage at the Richard Rodgers theater. Personally, I would like to see it.

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