A full year now after experiencing the film of Cats, I'm still seeing, and enjoying, video essays on youtube trying to explain exactly what went wrong, and also – far more intriguingly, for me at least – what the original stage show therefore got right. I don't expect anyone else to share my sickness however, nor do I expect anyone who doesn't share it to get through the above video from Sideways which I watched last night while waiting for the results to come in from Georgia. I only share it now because it's introduced me to a musical trope I'd never heard of before: the "I Am" Song.
Heroes of a musical – or more normally heroines – are supposed to get an "I Want" Song. I knew that. But what I hadn't clocked before, was that for every "Somewhere That's Green" or "Part Of Your World" there was also likely to be a show-stopping "Dentist!" or "Gaston" or "This is America". It doesn't necessarily have to be the baddie that delivers the "I Want" Song. For example, as Sideways explains, what happens in the original Cats (but not the movie) is a succession of "I Am" songs sung by cats who want to get into whatever the Heavyside Layer is, all passed over in favour of the one cat with an "I Want" Song.
It is normally the villain who gets the "I Am" Song though. And I found that fascinating, even before what happened this morning in Georgia, or what's happening now in Washington DC – this distinction between the hero who sings "I Want", and the villain who sings "I Am".
