Alexander Hamilton
My name is Alexander Hamilton
And there’s a million things I haven’t done
But just you wait, just you wait...
(Listen here.)
SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Here in our apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, it's all Hamilton, all the time — thanks to Kiddo, who got the cast album for his birthday. In case you haven't heard of it (and I don't know how that's possible), we're talking the hip-hopera Hamilton: An American Musical, currently crushing box-office records on Broadway. It's written and created by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also stars) and is about, yes, that famous Federalist who was never our president, but still graces the ten-dollar bill. The cast, seen on the Grammys here, recently took the show on the road to the White House, which you can see here. 
The Hamilton soundtrack, released digitally in September, skyrocketed into numbers no one's ever heard of for a musical: It was the first Broadway cast album to ever hit No. 1 on the Billboard Rap Album chart, the first to ever receive a five-star rating on Billboard.com, the highest-debuting cast album on the Billboard 200 in over 50 years, and boasted the highest debut sales for a digital casting album ever. It was streamed 16 million times in its first three weeks. (We bought the actual CD, because I wanted Kiddo to have the liner notes.)
So this non-stop barrage of Hamilton (and I don't mind at all — love it, too) made me think of albums I adored in my youth and played obsessively. For me, it was everything by the Beatles (even though they'd broken up before I was born), everything by Stephen Sondheim, and Prince, the Police, Michael Jackson, and Madonna (yes, I was an 80s girl).Reds, when was the last time you were so captivated with an album that you played it over and over again? Was it Broadway, classical, rock, jazz, pop? And what was it exactly that made you obsessive?
HALLIE EPHRON: First album I ever got hooked on: Tapestry. Carole King. I can still listen to it endlessly. It was the music and the lyrics and her voice. After that Brandenburg concertos and Mozart horn concertos and anything by Vivaldi.
LUCY BURDETTE: We were fortunate to jump on the Hamilton bandwagon early and saw it last spring. I'm so amazed at the multiple talents of Lin-Manual Miranda. Who can write music, plays, and then perform as the lead? he's an astonishing man and of course we adored the show. If you haven't seen or heard it, look for the YouTube video of him performing an early version for President Obama... [Yes, see above.]In general, this is how I listen to music--latch on to something I love and never let go. Bonnie Raitt's TAKIN MY TIME (crazy for the song GUILTY), Cat Stevens' TEASER AND THE FIRECAT (Moonshadow, oh my!), Teddy Thompson's UP FRONT AND DOWN LOW (She Thinks I Still Care), and all the early Beatles. And Patsy Cline.
RHYS BOWEN: The first albums that I listened to obsessively in my childhood were the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals: Carousel was the first (thanks to Hallie's parents who wrote the script). South Pacific, The King and I. I played them over and over. In college, it was Ella Fitzgerald. And then the Beatles. Most recently it's been Les Miserables that I play every time I'm on a road trip.
My favorite go-to album (for almost fifteen years now, ack) is the soundtrack from Love Actually. When I'm blue, when I'm happy, when I'm stuck on a stressful flight... Love it. I've had some weird album addictions in the past. The soundtrack from Kenneth Brannagh's Henry V. (Really, you're thinking?) The soundtrack from The English Patient. I could never bring myself to watch the movie a second time, but I LOVE the soundtrack. I even have Gemma playing a piece from it on the piano in one of the books.
HANK PHILIPPI RYAN: Such fun to do our history through
Paul Simon's Graceland. And hilariously the soundtrack to Love Actually-- agreed Debs!-- and equally My Best Friends Wedding. Oh, and The Three Tenors, their first album.Love reading all these! And I'm sure I've forgotten some...but I'd still be delighted to listen to any of these. And I completely forgot all the folk music!
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Susan, Youngest is a total Hamiltonian as well. She's memorized two long numbers and can sing the rest with music. We're talking about trying to get tickets soon for her 16th birthday in August, although I understand the wait is so long she might be halfway to seventeen before we can actually see the show!
I was lucky; my mother loved musicals, so I had access to some wonderful original Broadway cast recordings - Camelot, Hair, Sound of Music, Man of La Mancha, as well as movie soundtracks from West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees, etc. etc. The first album I obsessed over was the Broadway cast recording for Jesus Christ, Superstar, which I listened to approximately 500 times. I honestly think I wore the record grooves out. There was something about the music that just captivated ten-year-old me.The next music I got hooked on was Simon and Garfunkel. I can remember hiding out in my bedroom at the age of thirteen, listening to the sad songs over and over and over again while scribbling out heart-breaking Starsky and Hutch fanfiction in my spiral binders. (There was always a character who was very much like me who was either Starsky's or Hutch's younger sister.) The next craze, when I was in my teens, was Grease, which I listened to SO often I can now not stand to hear a note of it.
That's been my progression as an adult - no matter how much I love a pop or country or Broadway tune, I'll get heartily sick of it if I hear it too many times. The only thing I can listen to over and over? Classical music and opera. Someday I'm going to take a long lazy vacation on a boat somewhere and listen to four different recordings of Turandot one after the other, just because I have the time. Bliss. 
SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Reds and lovely readers, what's the first album you remember playing obsessively? Do you still listen to it — or was it part of your youth? Please tell us in the comments!
