Thread by @Lin_Manuel

Okay, here's a #VivoMusicDeepDive, I have a little time.
If you haven't seen #VivoMovie yet on @NetflixFilm , bookmark this thread til AFTER you've watched, porfa!
First song, One of A Kind...-LMM 1/??

Started writing One Of A Kind in 2009, and the dare to myself was simple: Start with the simplest rhythm in the world, and just keep building. Organ plays 2 chords, oompah oompah, and take off from there.
#VivoMusicDeepDive

Vivo's first two lines were originally:
"Tough crowd, nothing I haven't seen before, I'll have to pull out the stops & give them even more-" which are now in the reprise.
I was also playing Usnavi 8 shows a week at the time, so this is semi-autobiographical... #VivoMusicDeepDive

So this was always our opener, and didn't really change too much, except two things were true: We really wanted to start the movie IN song, but ALSO wanted to know how Andrés and Vivo met. And that wasn't built into the song. So the last thing I added... #VivoMusicDeepDive

was the flashback verse, freely cannibalizing Kirk's wonderful scenes where they first meet as concisely as possible. And today I learned it sounds DELIGHTful in German, thank you @netflix! #VivoMusicDeepDive -LMM

Welp, back to work. I'll add to the thread when I have more time. Grateful for you! -LMM

2) Mambo Cabana!
This song originally stayed in this dimension. It used to be Andrés excited to go, and his friend Montoya telling him to stay home. Somewhere on a hard drive from 2010, I have a demo of my Heights pals @EliseoNY as Andrés and @JMunozActor as Montoya...

Three things launched this tune into orbit:
1) Juan De Marcos, who brings SO much life and authenticity to this music.
2)The idea of going full 2-D Cuban album art fantasy, facilitating @LacketyLac's incredible trumpet transition to the nightclub as I yell "WHAT IS HAPPENING..."

3) @GloriaEstefan, Gloria Estefan, Gloria Estefan. The last verse of this song was originally all Andrés, but by making it a duet between Marta and Andres, and the gorgeous music we make, now we HEAR a love story worth fighting for. #VivoMusicDeepDive More later! -LMM

ONE MORE SONG: so the ghosts of 2 early songs that are NOT in the movie haunt the whole thing. One was called Old Friend, and Vivo sang it while tucking Andres in. It was very sweet, and the opening riff of it survives as the organ melody at the top of this tune.

The other was a tune called Brand New Song from the end of the movie. It was Kirk DeMicco's favorite, and I had to talk him into cutting it. Because once he's completed the mission, we the audience are ready to keep going. But the first two lines were...

"You always took care of the music;
I always took care of the crowd.
Now here I am--all I ever wanted was to make you proud."

Took the best parts of both those songs to help create One More Song. Also the crowd/no crying allowed/proud run at the end was inspired by this song I wrote when I was 18:

One more thing: I just love how the filmmakers animated everyone singing "One more song one more song" around Vivo, gives me chills. #VivoMusicDeepDive

MY OWN DRUM:
So, Gabi is the brainchild of Quiara Hudes, who based the character on her sister Gabi. It needed to sound AS different from Vivo & Andres as possible. I was inspired by @MissyElliott, one of the the most idiosyncratic and brilliant artists making music...

(and here's an excuse to post the I'm Better video, everyone knows Get Ur Freak On and Work It but more people should know I'm Better)

Reclaiming solitude & theatricality as a superpower was something I thought about a lot while writing the lyrics. Gabi reclaims a lot of insults as strengths: "Extra extra!" "I get my own seat on the bus" "You're at a 10, I need you at a 3."

When I was 10 years old I read @StephenKing's IT
(which is YOUNG! I was unsupervised!) but this passage about Ben Hascomb and loneliness hit me where I live & always stayed with me: (thanks to @BBW_BFF for posting here):

I played the recorder solo on the song, on the 3rd grade recorder, which I keep by my keyboard (thank you Ms Ames). And Quiara's daughter actually sang the first demo, and did an amazing job.

Finally, a huge amount of the success of this song is Ynairaly Simo, whose voice is pure joy, and grew so much as a singer over our multi-year recording session. Her exuberance IS the song. The job was to create a musical version of her joy. (📸 @LacketyLac)

And then to get Missy on the remix was so incredibly full circle.
Unsupervised, lonely, extra extra Ben Hascombish 10 year old me is doing backflips of joy and gratitude, and always will be.
Next up, Keep The Beat... #VivoMusicDeepDive

KEEP THE BEAT:
So this was already a wonderful scene, the heart of which is verbatim still at the center of the song, as Gabi "teaches" Vivo how to drum.
Then we realized it was a long time between tunes in the second act. So I pitched that maybe there was a song here.

I wrote Keep The Beat in May 2020, no end to the pandemic in sight. The fate of the movie was uncertain. We were trying to figure out how to keep going from our respective homes. So if the chorus hits extra hard...it's kind of where we were at.

While figuring out the chorus on piano, my 5 year old Sebastian wandered over and said, "can I help?" He fooled around on higher notes while I kept working. Eventually he landed on this. I looked up said "PLAY THAT AGAIN."

(I let him play a lot of other crazy stuff into the first demo too, but the right hand figure from the previous tweet stayed in the movie, lol)

The final section when Gabi comes back in singing My Own Drum while Vivo sings his chorus really hits home. It's so simple but so goosebump-inducing, to see them find a common language in music. And finding that with my son was pretty special too. -LMM #VivoMusicDeepDive

LOVE'S GONNA PICK YOU UP: So when faced with writing a song for the spoonbill "dating season," my brain immediately went to:
The last slow song at the middle school dance in the gym. And the panic of everyone pairing up around you while you...super don't.

My middle school slow song era was particularly tasty: Boyz II Men, Janet Jackson circa Again, Jodeci, Shai, All-4-One. So I tried to wrote a mid-90's R&B slow jam. The first time you hear it in the movie, @ChrisisSingin & @OneVeronicaGirl are singing it, in love as they are.

Brian Tyree Henry has an amazing voice, which I knew from his pre-movie star musical theater days. Nicole Byer said right up front: "I'm not a singer." (she does have my son Francisco's favorite line in the movie: "BAYOUS?! IN MY FACE?!?!?")

So I was thrilled to bring in one of my favorite voices @aneesafolds to sing for Valentina. Her movie debut!
(Cue Valentina singing "that's meeeeee" lol) You'll see her again in #TickTickBoomMovie later this year.

If 90's R&B taught me anything, it's that love is as painful as it is beautiful. So "Love's gonna pick you up," but it's ALSO "gonna kick your butt and drag you around." Some of you spotted the Back To The Future reference in the lyric:

And some of you caught a reference to the ol' "footprints" poem. ("That one set of footprints was love dragging you around.")
My abuela had that poem on her wall when I was a kid. I thought SHE wrote it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This song brings me so much joy. -LMM
#VivoMusicDeepDive

TOUGH CROWD: in the 1st draft of Vivo, Dancarino was a giant Alligator, and Vivo had a song that got the animals to band together to defeat him. There was one lyric from that I really liked:
"Predators & prey are not competitors today."

It's lovely for Vivo to embrace Gabi's improvisational aesthetic, while also harnessing what he knows: musicianship & showmanship. And I got to flip the rhymes in that line from the old thing. I think the new line is better. -LMM
#VivoMusicDeepDive

RUNNING OUT OF TIME: ALWAYS wanted to write an 80's latin freestyle song. Growing up, my sister had tapes upon tapes of Exposé, The Cover Girls...if you listen closely to @mamacita1126's pulse in a stethoscope, you'll hear I Won't Stop Loving You by C-Bank. 🤣

Since freestyle was so big in NY & Miami, I thought it would be a perfect way to introduce Miami and be a culture shock to Vivo. The first draft was called M.I.A.M.I. Out Of My Mind. I had @OneVeronicaGirl sing the demo, freestyle queen that she is.

After writing Keep The Beat last year, I ripped up M.I.A.M.I. and started from scratch, using the first half of the song as a freestyle REPRISE of Keep The Beat. It sounds like Keep The Beat if it were programmed into Dance Dance Revolution, or Beat Saber :)

Was so happy when the directors cast One Day At A Time showrunner @everythingloria as Marta's stage manager, because I was able to give her a musical moment: "Miss Sandoval, this is your half hour call..."

Marta's response gives me chills: "Necesitamos mas tiempo." Everything @GloriaEstefan sings gives me chills.

The 2nd verse of Running Out Of Time, the characters are singing the melody from my first demo, M.I.A.M.I. & @zoesaldana sounds amazing on it: "Her name is Gabi, she's 12, she's my daughter..."
& the response is sung by Leslie David Baker aka Stanley on The Office (!)

The tempo increases with every verse on this song, from the moment they sing "turn up the tempo," ratcheting up the pressure. (When the ticket taker speaks perfect Spanish, Gabi's "...¡excelente!" always cracks me up.)
Also love that our ear hears "MIA, Am I-"
#VivoMusicDeepDive

INSIDE YOUR HEART:
Wrote this song in Cardiff, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿. @VAMNit & kids had gone back to the States, and I was staring down a month alone. I sat in the same park where Boreal finds the portal between worlds on #HisDarkMaterials and started to write lyrics. -LMM

I don't normally start with lyrics, but they had to work on several levels: as a specific love song for Andrés to explain his decision to stay behind & express his love to Marta, for Marta to sing in response decades later, & as farewell/closure for Vivo. No pressure.

But seeing as I was alone & miles away from the love of MY life, the verses came pretty easy:
"And the world will soon adore you
as I learn to live without you;
every melody is for you, every song I write about you."
That's just for @VAMNit.

Vanessa has always wanted to see the world; I wrote a whole show about how I don't want to leave Washington Heights. 🤣 So that got me pretty easily to:
"And this fear
that keeps me by the door
shouldn't interfere
with you wanting more..."

The chorus arrived organically out of the verses, and satisfies Vivo's cry in act 1 for "one more song."
The final launch into orbit was to have the song's climax entirely in Spanish: my cousin @residente helped with the Spanish translation. (Gracias primo!)

Again, @GloriaEstefan's vocals are SO emotional throughout the song--she's an incredible actress on top of being an icon--I looked like the last scene of Cinema Paradiso, a total crying mess when I finally heard her sing it. #VivoMusicDeepDive

GRAND FINALE: Our bows! Completely symmetrical with One Of A Kind, but it's basically the Gabi remix. (I love how her instrument is a tricked out boombox) It wasn't til the premiere that I noticed that EVERY character we meet is here: the ticket taker! the bus driver!

There's that last burst of double-time from Vivo, the one move we hadn't pulled yet: "Somebody gimme a rhythm & gimme a minute & gimme a limit so I can exceed it...a brand new song's just what we needed..." -LMM #VivoMusicDeepDive

Thanks for reading. This was 11 years of joy, making this for you. Back in September or October or so. -LMM
#VivoMusicDeepDive

Oh, and you can listen to all this, plus selections from @LacketyLac's wonderful score, on the music thingy of your choice here... -LMM Vivo.lnk.to/VivoSoundtrack…