It’s awards season and boy are we cranky…
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[2.29]
Alfred Soto: I imagine this inspirational number would work splendidly as bumper music for a NBC show, for even Joel Osment would find it, to quote Karen Richards, de trop.
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Iain Mew: Like someone wearing all of their clothes on top of each other at once.
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John Seroff: I haven’t and won’t see The Greatest Showman, so perhaps I’m completely mistaken in the intent of the video clip (and no shade to Keala), but the unmitigated ahistorical gall of co-opting the travails of real life, overwhelmingly black sideshow performers in the service of setting up a sub-Scherzinger self-affirmation pablum boiler is gross enough before it becomes clear that the real purpose of the song is to aid onscreen frisson between sometimes-fashion models Zendaya and Zac Efron. Yuck.
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Will Adams: The sandblasted inspiro-pop is a good fit for a musical number that similarly sandblasts its history. Feeling down because your life’s worth has been reduced to being gawked at onstage and abused offstage? That’s nothing an anachronistic empowerment anthem and choreography won’t solve!
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Julian Axelrod: I haven’t seen the film, but based on this I’m assuming it’s about a woman who overcomes an angry mob of Hamilton extras and her fear of gigantic drums to form Imagine Dragons?
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Hannah Jocelyn: When I was younger, I had issues with processing sound — not because I wasn’t sensitive, but because I was oversensitive, taking in too much sensory input at once. This would usually result in whatever the 3-year-old equivalent of get me the fuck out was. I still have occasional moments where that’s triggered (concerts, particularly intense movies, crowded subways), and somehow, listening to the studio version of this song was one of those moments. What did me in were the jump-scare electronic drum fills, which feel tonally jarring both thematically and sonically, and the overproduction of the choirs which obscures some genuinely powerful performances. Instead of expanding the scope, the elements only make the whole production, and me, feel more claustrophobic. It didn’t matter what the lyrics are, because even though they’re better-than-average for this kind of inspirational song, it’s not like I’d even be able to pick them out when everything else is making me go borderline numb. (In this house, “This Is Me” is always preceded by “this is real” and succeeded by “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”) The whole Plattenization-of-P.T. Barnum doesn’t matter, nor does the strange lack of energy in the visuals when the sound affects me like this. Looking up the credits, I saw people on all ends whose work I generally admire (even Pasek and Paul, who already wrote the Lawful Good to this song’s Chaotic Evil), so I can’t explain how this total mess happened. But get me the fuck out of the sum of its parts.
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Katie Gill: The only reason Dear Evan Hansen won all those Tonys is because the cast can sell the hell out of those generic lyrics and middle of the road tunes. Pasek and Paul are boring, have always been boring and this boring-ass “inspirational” song that hits every cliche in the book and uses every lazy songwriting technique known to man doesn’t help their case. This is the song that New Directions would write and perform on the season finale of Glee because they need an original song to actually win Regionals, you guys! This song will be played in the background as NBC advertises it’s new fall schedule to try and show just how unique and daring the network is. And it’s gonna win the Best Original Song Oscar because of course it fucking will.
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