An evening with the Hamilton nightcore remixes
Let's queue it up, why don't we?
Yesterday, in the dead of night, Lin-Manuel Miranda struck again. The affable songwriter has had a mixed track record since his big break, ranging from smashes like Moana and Encanto to duds like Mufasa: The Lion King, but he’s never abandoned the ol’ cash cow: Hamilton.
This time, he’s quietly dropped an EP of nightcore remixes to songs from the smash hit musical. As someone who never really liked Hamilton but finds its existence insanely funny, I had to check it out as a service to you all. The EP is titled Hamilton: Like You’re Running Out of Time and, in an omen that bodes poorly for the project’s quality, features no credited remix producers.
As I write this, I haven’t yet listened to the project (but like, come on). One of the first things I’ll be listening for is whether it’s actually nightcore, as the titles of each track imply, or if it’s simply sped-up versions of the songs, as labels have been doing for years now.
17 seconds into the first track, and I’m sorry to say, this is going to be a bumpy ride. There are no dance elements added to the “Alexander Hamilton” beat. It’s sped up and pitched up, and not even by that much. The very lightly hip-hop-inflected show tunes score of Hamilton feels like it was made precisely to be un-nightcore-able. You can’t put anime boys over this!
As I listen on, a few more thoughts cross my mind. Firstly, the show tune structure is almost worse for nightcore than the beat. It’s impossible to hear the chorus going “in New York, you can be a new man” and not imagine the Chipettes doing jazz hands. So far, the only singer whose voice lends itself to nightcore here is Philippa Soo.
“Satisfied” fares ever-so-slightly better thanks to some vocal effect stuff that at least feels like a producer was in the room. Whichever studio intern cobbled this together doesn’t seem to understand nightcore, but I’m also not sure they understand Hamilton. The last thing the Beltway millennials and pasty theatre kids who adore this show need is for the rapping to be faster.
What scares me the most at this point is that the record is 16 minutes long and I’m about 6 minutes through. My one consolation is that I’m listening sober—if I was high and this felt longer, I think I’d burst into tears (or flames).
Next up is “My Shot”, and I have to say, they did at least pick out some standout tracks for this. Assuming this was made to be used on TikTok, I guess they figured the filler songs like “Say No to This” and “The Reynolds Pamphlet” would’ve sunk like a stone. But that assumes any thought went into this, which I struggle to believe.
Lin-Manuel’s rapping bears obvious shades of B-Real, but when it’s all sped up, you can really hear the Eminem. I feel like I’m waiting for him to ad-lib “BITCH!” or call Justin Timberlake a fag. Whatever emotional resonance existed in these songs is lost in these sped-up versions, which feels like part of what’s missing. A great nightcore remix makes the emotional highs and lows of the original song feel bigger, not disappear completely.
Even the old-school hip-hop overture for “The Schuyler Sisters” translates terribly to nightcore. All I can think about at this point is the missed opportunity—if they had worked with some actual producers and put beats behind these songs, it would’ve still been super fucking weird, but it would’ve been interesting! Maybe even admirable!
At least the bass on this one gives you something to grab onto. It still feels like the Chipettes, but maybe the Chipettes doing a fun disco number. But by the time we get to the last chorus, there’s only one thought left in my head: what the fuck am I listening to?
“Aaron Burr, Sir” opens a little more compellingly. Again, if this built up to a beat drop, it might actually kinda work. The patter-over-piano kinda works in a nightcore context, and it’s begging for some kind of crescendo behind it. It’s also one of the songs I enjoy the most from the original show.
It’s the live instruments, I think to myself. But no, I counter, plenty of great nightcore remixes use live instruments. The truth is, it’s the kind of live instruments. Pianos and guitars are one thing, but cello? Banjo? Viola? The music in Hamilton is deliberately archaic, orchestral in the sense that these characters might have known and loved in the 1700s. The occasional flourishes of hip-hop and R&B are just that—occasional. And flourishes. And they don’t really work with nightcore anyway!
Finally, I make it to the last track: “Guns and Ships”, the one that people are most annoying about. And I’m sorry to say it, but out of the songs on this album, this one comes the closest to working. It’s not just the speed of the song, which comes closest to the tempo of the trance and Eurodance songs that nightcore traditionally takes on. It’s the structure. The instrumentation is a little less classical, the production is a little more controlled, and the way it builds and drops out actually carries over to the nightcore version instead of just getting watered down. If you had told me coming in that “Guns and Ships” would be the only song on this record that kinda sorta comes close to working if you squint, I would’ve said, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Overall, would I recommend anyone else take on the Hamilton nightcore EP? No. It really dreadfully, shockingly doesn’t work—it’s the kind of bizarre cultural artifact I could do a whole Pulp Friction episode on if I was currently doing that sort of thing.
If, for whatever reason, you are looking for quality nightcore remixes of songs from Hamilton, you’re not gonna find it here. Instead, you’ll strap in for the longest 15 minutes of your life as you realize just how bad a “nightcore” “remix” (which is truly neither nightcore nor a remix) can be. The one place I’d recommend it is with a circle of close friends who don’t mind being tortured and are willing to, as we used to say, do it for the Vine.
I think I like Hamilton even less now?