The Most Intimate Corner of Music

Song cycles have always had my heart—until I forgot about them for a while. Recently, they crept back in like an old relationship, and naturally, I did what anyone does with an ex: I deep-dived.

If you’ve never listened to one, think of a song cycle like a concept album’s theatre kid cousin: individual songs that stand on their own but become something bigger together.

My first deep dive back in was thanks to Spotify and Discover Weekly. Joey Contreras, if you dont know him, look him up, just wrote a song cycle called In Pieces.

In Pieces

In Pieces is the love story about the people you don’t end up with.

Grey, a laidback singer/songwriter, and Charlie, a casually smart introvert, strike up an unexpected friendship that blossoms out of their high school computer science class. But when those feelings turn romantic, they experience a fleeting teenage dream with long-lasting impacts. Peter, the charismatically stubborn, but eager brother of Charlie, navigates career aspirations and city temptations while dating Sam, an older and more successful consultant, determined to check all her boxes. Elsewhere, Alex, a curious and kind transplant, steps outside of her comfort zone, while championing River, an almost jaded good-time girl, on her revolving door of dates.

Told through a series of memories and vignettes, friends, family, and former lovers arrive back to the present, learning to embrace all the pieces of who they are and see where that leads them next.

The duet song that popped up on my Discover Weekly was "Bloom", a song that goes through the emotions of a first date and how "awkward" and fulfilling they can be if they go the right way...even if you don't end up with the person. It may, or may not, lead you to the next right person. Antonio Ciprano and Stephanie Torns sing it with eagerness and timidness that we all feel meeting someone for the first time, but also with the relatability of lyrics like:

S: You're charming. That's dangerous.

A: Why is that dangerous?

S: I've seen this before. Girl falls for a guy, he's sweet, very sweet until he isolates her, drains her bank account, and then somehow never gets convicted when she mysteriously disappears. I watch a lot of true crime docs.

A: Whoa, wait, so now I'm giving off serial killer vibes? You asked me out!

S: Fair. It's just dating can feel so high stakes.

The stories are all done so well with a kitschy feel and characters that work in a coffee shop, a classroom, or a local native that shows around the transplant. It's all those relatable songs that we want as we navigate the world of romance, friendships, and something in-between?

I can't lie, this song never gets skipped in car and always sung at full volume. If none if this was enough to convince you, Antonio Ciprano, John Logan in the new show Off Campus has a voice like literal butter. A double plus - Andrew Barth Feldman, from allll of broadway AND No Hard Feelings with Jennifer Lawrence is the other male lead. Maybe that’s why Bloom sticks with me—dating doesn’t always become forever, but sometimes it still becomes important.

After Bloom came up on my Discover Weekly, I went back to my tried and true - Ordinary Days. This was the musical where I heard one song, and it became my MISSION to someday be in it, direct it, or just plain see it.

Ordinary Days

Ordinary Days tells the story of four young New Yorkers whose lives intersect as they search for fulfillment, happiness, love and cabs. Through a score of vibrant and memorable songs, their experiences ring startlingly true to life. Ordinary Days is an original musical for anyone who's ever struggled to appreciate the simple things in a complex place. With equal doses of humor and poignancy, it celebrates how 8.3 million individual stories combine in unexpected ways to make New York City such a unique and extraordinary home.

A couple months ago, I saw a challenge on Vocal that called to talk about your favorite piece of art... now I'm not really a museum art kind of person. However, I immediately thought of a song from Ordinary Days that takes place in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I called it The Color of an Ordinary Day. Made me look at art in a completely different way... and the painting was an apple. Simplicity in its finest.

I drove through San Diego and recently listened to it all again, from top to bottom. Four characters, and yet all the stories intertwine so seemlessly. Everytime I listen, I find a new favorite and this last time was Big Picture. An anal-retentive woman, who has her whole future "supposedly" figured out and a cat-sitter for an artist that is trying to figure out what he's doing for the next five minutes have a conversation about their "futures" that goes like this:

[WARREN, spoken]

So, what's yours?

[DEB]

Well, since you asked

In five years, I'll have an amazing apartment

With bookshelves built into the walls

A window that looks out on someplace big

And a personal assistant who screens my calls

The book I write will be required reading

To get into the seminars that I'll be leading

That's the plan

As far as I can see it

And yet it

Isn't quite apparent

What I'm supposed to do

To get it...

Some big picture

Another stellar example of how relatable a song cycle can be related to our daily lives. Somedays I have seventeen plans for the future and some days I doom scroll on TikTok until I will myself to get up.

The Theory of Relativity

Einstein's theory of relativity, encompassing both special and general relativity, revolutionized our understanding of space, time, gravity, and the universe, stating that measurements of space and time depend on the relative motion of the observer and the observed, and that gravity is a warping of spacetime caused by mass and energy.

Sounds like a song cycle for nerds, right? But underneath all the space metaphors, it’s still about the same thing most song cycles are: love, expectations, and trying to figure out who you become. I loved the complex story telling about something simple that it is in pretty much every song cycle, love, but with the addition of immensity. One of the lyrics in the first song "Relativity" is:

And we're all on this marble, That hurtles through space.

Our orbits and paths are unique.

But with someone beside me

To measure my pace,

Somehow I'm not quite so meek.

This was one of the only theatre productions I did in College, and I'll be honest, it was an awful experience - apart from the music and doing it with my "then" boyfriend. The director was an ass, he decided once you were on stage, you were not leaving, so we did A LOT of chair-ography, and not well. However, I got to sing the duet "Great Expectations" and it was the turning point of the entire show. A song that explores the heavy, often suffocating weight of parental and societal expectations, and the personal courage required to break away and pursue one's own dreams.

[CATHERINE]

My parents were immigrants

New to these shores

When they were barely eighteen.

They struggled and sacrificed,

pounded on doors,

to carve out the life they'd foreseen.

They fashioned that life out of hope and thin air.

A life for the daughter they someday would share.

I am that daughter,

Eternally grateful for all that they gave up for me.

[MIKE]

I belong to a long line of men.

All electricians by trade.

My grandfather first. My father then.

So proud of the business they made.

A mantle is claimed. A torch will be passed.

Making a family legacy last.

So here I stand with my future ordained

and a life that is planned out for me.

We Aren't Kids Anymore

"We Aren't Kids Anymore" explores the complexities of having a dream, chasing that dream, and the rocky path between the two. At its core, this musical reminds us that, no matter who you are, growing up is still a journey of guesses made in the dark.

The music is a perfect mix of pop, R&B, and musical theatre ballads. A perfect mix of musicians and talent - women who belt their ass off, men who sing on the edge of tears, and both of them encapsulating the fear of following your dreams, especially as artists, musicians, and performers, or deciding to find a more "practical" job. I will say if the lyrics of the first song, "Hello My Name is Drew", aren't the most relatable, I'm not sure what will pull you in:

[bonnie]

i smile too much

[nicholas]

i cry to much

[colton]

i laugh at inappropriate times

[lilli]

i share too much

[raymond]

i care too much

[bonnie]

i never give enough of my time

[all]

i smoke too much

i drink to much

i joke too much

and i think too much

[nicholas]

no one’s perfect

but who wants to be?

Just these couple of these examples are a great start for anyone that wants to dip their toe into musical theatre. It’s like reading a short novel in music form. One song gives you a moment; a song cycle gives you an arc—someone changes by the end. You start noticing recurring ideas. A melody comes back later with a different meaning and suddenly you realize the composer was planting emotional clues the whole time.

It rewards attention without demanding expertise. You don’t need to know theory. You just follow the mood, the text, and where the music takes you. If you love concept albums, you already like the idea.

That’s what keeps bringing me back to song cycles. They don’t ask for huge spectacle or perfect understanding. They ask you to sit with someone for a few songs and see if you recognize yourself somewhere in the middle of their story.

And usually, at least for me, I do.