#we raise our cups

[finleyforevermore]

My long overdue tribute to Nex Benedict.

I'm no poet, nor am I a composer, rewriting this song I love was the least I could do for a teen who was brutally robbed of their life.

Pour the wine and raise a cup

Drink up, siblings, you know why

And for dear Nex, please spill a drop

A new angel soars in the sky 

Some birds sing when the sun shines bright

My praise is not for them

But the one who sang in the dead of night

I raise my cup to him

My sorrow is immeasurable 

It stretches far and wide

Perhaps I will forever mourn

This child who shouldn't have died

Some flowers bloom

Where the green grass grows

My praise is not for them

But the one who bloomed in the bitter snow

I raise my cup to him

I raise my cup and drink it up

I raise it high and drink it dry

To darling Nex and all of us

Goodnight, siblings, goodnight.

Adapted from "We Raise Our Cups" and "I Raise My Cup to Him" from the musical Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell.

[wherebettertoescape]

Top 10 Underrated Songs from Musicals (Sad Edition)

so I've been down a wormhole of YouTube rank videos of songs in musicals. And so many of them I disagree with - particularly the ones looking at the sad/evocative songs. So, I decided to make my own ranking of saddest songs in musicals, but I'm gonna try and avoid just posting the usual ones, the ones that I usually see in these videos and instead go for the ones that I WISH were included because they're SOOOOO good

I'm also very well aware that so many people are gonna disagree and argue with my choices (including Louise, who I did NOT run this post by 😂) so please - let me know which ones you think deserve more recognition!

(I don't know which order you're meant to do rank posts in so I'm gonna start with number 10 and lead up to number 1??)

10. That's What You Call A Dream (Bonnie & Clyde)

I have such a soft spot for songs in musicals that are about grief for a dead dream, grief for a life that they could have had - anyone who made it through my Outsiders post will probably know that. And that's exactly what this song is - even with the amount of death within the show, Bonnie and Clyde is not exactly what I'd call a sad musical? You know exactly what's going to happen from the start, and even while you root for the two of them, they're not exactly sympathetic characters.

Blanche, though, she is exactly that. I know some people don't like Blanche too much, and I could go on and on about how I disagree with that and also with the notion that her and Buck are only there for comic relief. But I won't, and I'll instead settle with saying that within the musical she is a reluctant participant within her own life because she is intrinsically tied to Buck because she loves him.

While the other characters have grand dreams of fame and fortune, Blanche dreams of the mundane - this song is all about how she just wants a normal, simple life with Buck. But even that simple life is out of her reach - at the time she first sings this song, they haven't yet rejoined Clyde, but she is becoming more and more aware even then (while they're living within the law) that they're never going to get the life she dreams of, because the police are never going to leave Buck alone because he has a criminal record, and even if he didn't, being related to Clyde is enough to cast suspicion on them at all times. Even so, Blanche loves Buck and sticks with him through everything - and then the reprise of it when Buck's dying, don't even get me STARTED on how beautifully sad it is.

9. Dear Bill (Operation Mincemeat)

I get the feeling that there's gonna be a slight trend in this list of songs in usually upbeat musicals that just come in and absolutely decimate me emotionally. "Dear Bill" is the ideal example of that - Operation Mincemeat as a show is so upbeat, so funny, so melodramatically unique, and all the songs are so enthusiastic and filled to the brim with jokes and word play.

And then there's "Dear Bill" - a ballad in the form of a love letter penned by Hester to their fictitious fallen soldier, drawing on her own past experiences of writing to Tom, her partner who died fighting in the First World War. She reflects on what it's like to be left behind in England while her partner is off fighting - updating him on the day-to-day things that have been going on since he died, rather than offering endless proclamations of love.

And then, midway through the song, she slips up. She forgets that she's not writing a false letter to their made-up soldier Bill, and instead addresses her lost love. The letter is becomes so full of anger and loss and heartbreak, and the audience is forced to remember that Hester was a real person, that the people in the show were all real and all felt this loss at some point or another. And Hester is so tired and angry at the war - "why did we meet in the middle of a war? what a silly thing for anyone to do", just longing for the war to be over, because this isn't even the first war she's lived through. Adding onto that is when Jean, who is listening to Hester writing this letter, later on brings up that line again (in Useful) - "I think that when people meet in the middle of a war, it feels like it means something more" and it's just this very beautiful moment of friendship between these two very different war-hardened women.

8. Lifeboat (Heathers)

Lifeboat is kinda similar in it being a shockingly sad song within an otherwise comedic show. I know that there are probably other, better songs within Heathers I could have listed, but Lifeboat has always stuck with me. The drop from her singing "the tiniest lifeboat with people I know" to her practically screaming "EVERYONE'S PUSHING, EVERYONE'S FIGHTING" is the kind of thing that haunts me when I try to sleep at night.

This is the song of a girl whose entire life has been flipped upside down. She is losing so many people who she loves, all because (from what she knows) they have decided to kill themselves. I know its a comedic line, but there's something so sad in her speech beforehand where she goes "I'm on the damn bus again because all my rides to school are DEAD".

Lifeboat is just this eruption of overwhelming emotion - sadness, confusion, anger, and above all this desperation to understand what's happening to her friends, it truly is a cry for help. Only for it to be used against her by one of her remaining best friends - Heather McNamara is not exactly a good person, but she is trying to be and she has just unburdened her insecurities (yes, in the completely wrong environment but she doesn't know any better) only to be told to kill herself. When I saw Heathers live, it was Lifeboat that brought me to tears - it was a musical that I had never cried at before, and maybe it was just that the actress I saw was incredible, but even so I think it's such an underrated song and one of the saddest musical tunes.

7. One to Seventeen (The Little Big Things)

okay I can't lie, before The Outsiders musical came out, The Little Big Things was the musical I was obsessed with - I've not seen it. I'm hopeful I'll be able to see it. I've read the autobiography, and I've seen the Olivier performance and I'm in love with all the cast.

And writing this list, there are so many songs from this soundtrack that I wanted to put on, but there's something about One to Seventeen that always brings me to tears. Just her absolute desperation, her pain at seeing her son growing up and his accident and I just can't even express it.

Also I just think that there aren't enough shows which show good parent/child relations and that's one thing that I love about The Little Big Things. And listening to One to Seventeen I just get so emotional and I wanna text my mum to like thank her for every thing she's ever done for me and like apologise for when she'd get calls from school saying I'd been hurt or something. Something about I dunno, that moment when you realise your parents are humans too? Like that's what this song feels like to me and it's so sad and beautiful and I love it

6. For Good (Wicked)

This is probably the one that cannot be labelled as "underrated", but also the one that no one's going to argue about it. As such, it needs the least explanation 😂

"I know I'm who I am today because of you" - what a BANGER of a line, just always makes me think of my best friend and how much I love her and miss her. I'm a sucker for friendships - give me friendship over romance any day.

Just the complete heartbreaking notion of being irreparably changed by someone who had originally been your enemy, and then having to realise that you're going to have to figure out how to live without them, but really they're always going to be with you just 🥺

5. Stay Gold (The Outsiders)

I'll be quick on this one, because if you want my full thoughts on Stay Gold I've made a whole other post about it 😂 - I'm obsessed with this show at the moment, and Sky Lakota-Lynch has just got absolutely no right to make me so emotional wit this song.

It's the "sixteen years" verse that gets me every time, just him realising that what he'd always dreamed about (having a family) was something that he'd actually had all along with the Greasers, and while the entire of the gang think that Johnny is the one member that they can't live without, Ponyboy is the one member that he can't live without.

And also the reference to the father who thanks him for saving the little girl and how he just truly thinks that the girl's life is worth more than his. Even typing it out gets me all emotional 🥲

4. I'll Be Here (Ordinary Days)

This is one of my absolute favourite musicals, and this FUCKING SONG has NO RIGHT to make me feel SO MUCH

It's essentially just a recap of Claire's relationship with her ex-husband who passed away. And it's such an important song because throughout the musical before this song, Claire is not exactly a likeable character - she seems kinda rude and standoffish. She doesn't seem to like her current boyfriend, Jason, at all, and the audience is left in the dark as for why?

I remember the first time listening to it and kind of wanting Jason to break up with her? I thought that she was treating him kinda bad for no reason? And then this FUCKING SONG comes along, and it breaks my heart every time I listen to it because she's so wracked with guilt and love and grief.

It's so rare, at least for me, that one song can change your entire perception of a character, but that's exactly what I'll Be Here does

3. Drink With Me (Les Miserables)

I think this is the one that most people are gonna be mad about. Don't get me wrong, I love and appreciate the other fucking depressing songs in Les Mis (i.e. most of them - I could write ESSAYS on Little People and Empty Chairs), Drink With Me will always be the one that makes me sob.

Louise will confirm but I've got a thing about drinking songs and letter songs. They always make me cry a little. There's something about the vulnerability of them paired with the relative simplicity of the music.

Drink With Me is just so powerful - it's entire point is to humanise Les Amis for the audience, to allow us to recognise that these revolutionaries (despite their larger-than-life appearance onstage) are just students. And this alongside the fact that we are introduced to Grantaire as being the drunkard and the cynic of the group, and yet it's not led by him? At some point I'm gonna make a whole post about the meaning of that 😂

But as well the fact that Enjolras doesn't contribute. At least in the productions that I've seen of it, Enjolras doesn't join in - while the rest of them are being humanised, Enjolras remains distant, he remains unreachable to his friends, to Grantaire who truly does idolise him (calling him Apollo, he is the only thing that Grantaire believes in), and it keeps him distant from the audience as well, it allows us to continue to view him as a martyr. But then there's Grantaire who, despite everything he says is afraid to die, and he just wants some inkling from Enjolras that their fearless leader feels the same - the "can it be you fear to die? [...] is your life just one more lie?" is the most desperate beg from Grantaire for Enjolras to confide in them and yeah, I don't know.

For me, Drink With Me is the song where it starts for me - I start crying here, and then don't stop until the end 😂

2. What Would I Do (Falsettos)

I think it's a travesty that Falsettos is almost never on those lists. It's a fucking work of art as a musical. Just so raw and painful and I've never watched it the whole way through without crying at least once.

So yeah, I was definitely torn for which Falsettos song to put in this list - Unlikely Lovers? You Gotta Die Sometime? so many good choices. But this does go back to the thing I said about having grief for a life that could have been.

And also, despite how hard their life together had been, knowing how hard it was to love each other, how painful and drawn-out their illnesses were going to be, the knowledge that Marvin doesn't regret it, that he knows that he would choose Whizzer every time?? That's my roman empire 😂

The fact as well that even in this monologue, he can't call Whizzer his boyfriend/partner, Marvin always calls him "my friend" just is so painful I don't know man

"Once I was told that good men get better with age. We're just gonna skip that stage" is just the most heartbreaking line ever - and the way that in the recording Christian Borle's voice breaks as he sings it will genuinely haunt me until the day I die

1. We Raise Our Cups (Hadestown)

Another musical that there are definitely so many options for "sad songs" - I wanna give "Flowers" an honourable mention because that's the one that really gets me, it's so beautiful.

But Louise and I saw Hadestown in the West End a couple of months ago now, and I had kinda forgotten that it ended with this song and I left the Lyric theatre in FLOODS of tears, and so for that alone I have to give it number 1 position 😂

I think it's partly with the staging on the West End, in "Living it Up on Top" when Orpheus says "to the world we dream of... and the one we live in now", there's a moment when the entire cast turns to the audience to raise their cups directly to them, and the finale with this song just took me right back to that moment and I lost it entirely.

Because I was forced to realise that when Orpheus said that at the start, that was an Orpheus who wouldn't have looked back, who had faith that the world could change, it could be kind to him. But now the Orpheus that they were singing about in "We Raise Our Cups" is hardened and more cynical and so of course he looks back

i just think it should be illegal to end it with this song and then expect you to get on the tube around London afterwards, okay? 😂

OKAY so that's my list - please let me know what your thoughts are as well - any that you agree with or disagree with? Or just your own rankings because I think I'm gonna come back to this in like a week and want to fight myself so... let me know 😂

Freddie 🐸

[criedhearts]

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○⠀27.02.24 — Hadestown, Lyric Theatre, London.

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‟⠀Some flowers bloom

Where the green grass grows

Our praise is not for them

But the ones who bloom

In the bitter snow⠀„

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‟⠀We raise our cups

To them

We raise 'em high

And drink 'em dry

To Orpheus

And all of us⠀. . . ⠀„

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[rowan-on-the-moon]

i’ve seen hadestown on the west end twice now, and the second time i tried to commit everything to memory as much as possible - i have no idea if/when i’ll be able to see it onstage again, after all.

the song i don’t even have to try to recall in detail is we raise our cups. what an incredible moment. at both performances, a standing ovation that could only be hushed by melanie la barrie’s flawless portrayal of hermes. at both performances, the audience stays standing, many halfway to the exits having had no idea one last song would be sung.

all the audience stands there as the players of this ancient story pay homage to another ancient tradition, the chorus making sure no one leaves without knowing exactly how they feel about this story. it’s a complete fourth-wall break; the cast sing of an orpheus who is not the one onstage, silent except for his guitar accompaniment, his music wandering in tune with the story even as he is far away.

persephone and eurydice sing it together, showing an implicit forgiveness of the poor boy who tried, the poor boy who made a terrible mistake, who has made it before countless times and will make it again and again. that boy who nonetheless deserves our utmost respect, who deserves to see our cups raised, because we saw him bring the world back into tune, we saw him raise hell, we saw him soften the cold, hard heart of a king and find his wife again. and we know he can and will do all of that again, defiantly hoping that it will turn out, that the impossible can happen, and that he and eurydice can be together again.

it shakes me to my core, the way hadestown so seamlessly rushes out from the story and into your core, filling you with such a boundless sense of hope every time you listen to the tragic songs of these people’s story. instinctively, you might think that a tragedy could never be so inherently optimistic - but this strange, wonderful musical proves that notion wrong by doing what it does best: the impossible.

[winter2468]

Thinking about how Orpheus used to have a song at the end of the show called Cloud Machine in which he addressed Apollo in his grief at losing Eurydice, asking Apollo to come down and bring destruction.

Thinking about how in the myths, Orpheus died because he refused to worship any god other than Apollo, and the Maenads tore him apart.

Thinking about how even in the latest version of the Hadestown production, as Orpheus walks offstage after Eurydice is pulled back to the underworld, he reaches up for the light.

Pour the wine and raise a cup for Orpheus, wherever he is now. But he was mortal and there are already hints of exactly what will get him killed.

[therhythmismyblanket]

Made the mistake of watching a bootleg of Road to hell (Reprise) & We raise our cups and now I’m in my kitchen crying

[wolfythewitch]

When I finish tma I want to make an animatic of these 3 songs

[honey-rye]

Next

welcome to We Raise Our Cups, the Apocalypse Au no one asked for but I'm giving you anyway :)

don't mind how inconsistent my art style is.

[portgasfilms]

frobin living the best life knowing they are the only couple without miscommunication issues in the thousand sunny

[theteaisaddictive]

sobbing. SOBBING. hadestown you will Always be my number one.

[xceanlynx]

I'll forever find it amusing how yellow and green t-shirts with BRAZIL written in the front became a fashion trend abroad. I've seen some with BELO HORIZONTE written too (Belo Horizonte is the capital of the state Minas Gerais), like, is there any thing more random to trend?

Edit: for reference, a pic taken somewhere in Germany I've found on twitter

[19th-century-gay-german-teens]

I think it’s homophobic that the human body is not capable of doing six-part harmony all by itself.

[arosebyan0thername]

Ok well the old hadestown soundtrack is kinda disappointing after listening exclusively to the OBC soundtrack for so long :(

[desolationcleo]

if i had a nickel for every animatic focusing on the ghosts of the lifers when there's only one player remaining that causes me to break down in Emotions i'd have two nickels which isn't a lot but augh there's two

[darkarmageddon]

I am very normal about Hadestown.

Very. Normal.

[honey-rye]

Part One | Part Two

Story One: The Fall of Run of the Mill