Tony-nominated composers Benj Pasek & Justin Paul talk about the differences between writing a stand-alone cabaret song and a song for a show.
Justin Paul: It is two really different things: writing a stand-alone cabaret song and writing a song in a show. It is something we actually learned about from Lynn Ahrens…
Benj Pasek & Justin Paul: …and Stephen Flaherty – who wrote ROCKY…
Justin Paul: …and have written a lot of musicals. They were mentors of ours for a year-long program in New York City…
Benj Pasek: …and still are!
Justin Paul: And one thing that Lynn pointed out to us is that we were trying to do a lot in our songs. They would start in this one place and tell a whole story and by the end of the song would be a totally different thing.
Benj Pasek: She talked about it going from A to Z, through the entire alphabet, it encompasses too much almost. And in a cabaret song, you have to start in one place and end in a completely different place.
Justin Paul: You are creating a world and a story in one song, whereas what we needed to learn to do was to write a song for a character that would have just a little bit of a journey because they are doing that arc throughout the entire musical, so you can’t write the whole arc into it.
Benj Pasek: It is not A-Z, it is A-B.
Justin Paul: But it is not as easy as just „okay, that is fine, we just don’t have to write as much in a song“, it is actually sometimes hard to think „okay, I have got to write a song that only moves the character forward this much“ but it still has to be a full song…
Benj Pasek: Keep the audience interested for 4 minutes.
Justin Paul: Right. So it requires to be more specific and nuance to work, for them to sort of sit in that one moment and think „what am I going to do? What is my next decision for that character?“ And to be able to do that in just four minutes…
Benj Pasek: That is a challenge in itself.
Justin Paul: In one way, it is easier to set up a whole world, do a story song in one song. When you only have a little bit of dramatic ground to cover, but you need to stretch it over a whole song, then you really have to get inside the character’s head and think: „Where would they go next? What would they say next?“ So they are really different things.
