Why Death Note the Musical is an Unexpected Masterpiece

0:00 when I first heard there was a musical based on the anime death note I thought it would be a cringe Fest but this musical has no business being as good as it is I would go as far as to say it's one of my favorite musical albums out there so today if you could indulge me I'm going to take my music degree out of the garage for about an hour and talk about this musical Death Note whether you've watched it before or not you probably know the basic premise overachiever with a God complex and an idealized sense of justice finds a book where if you write somebody's name in it they die chaos ensues the 2003 manga has been adapted countless times an anime video games liveaction movies and the questionable

0:47 Netflix adaptation relax L you're sleep you're sleep and you're dreaming of some 8ot tall demon but today's video is about the musical let's begin with a bit of background the musical received a New York Workshop in 2014 but sadly an Eng Eng language production never happened a Japanese production premiered in 2015 and later a Korean production I always assumed that the Japanese version was the original and then it was Rewritten for English but I was surprised to find out that it was actually the other way around but on reflection that makes sense because the English lyrics fit the music way too well to be rewrites the Musical lyrics were by Frank wildhorn and Jack Murphy respectively and they both went so hard you might recognize wild Horn's name as the score writer for the Jackal and Hyde musical he also wrote where the broken hearts go for

1:32 Whitney Houston which is random but cool we love a versatile King when worldon was first approached about doing the musical he was hesitant at first but it was his son who convinced him to take on the project so obligatory moment of gratitude for World horn junr there we owe you so much so in this video I'm going to go through each song in the musical and provide a bit of a lyric analysis and also a bit of a score analysis I'm not going to talk about the plot the staging or anything like that this is solely based on the music before we get stuck into the first song I did just want to mention the soundtrack from the anime because the musical regularly references ideas that we hear in the soundtrack music we can't start analyzing the musical without first acknowledging the original anime soundtrack by yoshihisa hirano and Hideki tanui these 28 tracks

2:17 played in the background of scenes throughout the anime and there are many references to them in the musical which is smart because the anime soundtrack has some awesome songwriting on it let's start with instrumentation most of the songs on the soundtrack use Rock instrumentation guitars bases pianos drum kits this instrumentation is pretty identical to the musical the only times new instruments are added in the musical there's a very clear narrative purpose behind it in the anime there's a piece of music entitled Lights theme and a piece entitled L's Theme what's interesting is they both start similarly a solo instrument playing broken chords with vit's instrument being a guitar and L's being a piano this idea is extended into the musical

3:05 and these two characters are regularly identified with these respective instruments next melodic and harmonic motifs a motif is similar to a riff or a lick it's a memorable returning passage in a piece of music the anime sand track is foot motifs some of which transfer over to the musical the first one I'll mention we'll call the Kira Motif here's where it's taken from [Music] Death Note has a lot of religious imagery in it and the Kira music plays into this as it's heavily inspired by Gregorian chance and even uses the Latin cirer lyrics many people describe the melody as quite uneasy a reason for this is because it uses a scale we're less familiar with hearing in modern western music the kirade uses a mode the Dorian

3:52 mode to be exact I won't spend ages here going into detail about the differences but speaking generally modes preceded scales as a way of dividing up octaves into 12 tones lots of early music use modes and that's why you might get a medieval sense when you hear the Kira back to the musical modal Melody writing features a number of times throughout and it's a clever way World horn represents his Immortal characters the shinigamis as well as characters who have a strong sense of tradition like s Yagami the second Motif I'll mention is a lot simpler I'll call it the two-tone Motif quite simply it's when we hear a melody or Harmony interchange between one note and the note a tone above it here's an example in the soundtrack now all that context is out the way

4:39 let's talk about the first song in this musical the Overture is less than a minute long but it sets the scene for the musical perfectly it begins simply with the sound of a clock ticking this is a sound we hear a lot in the source material while Kira counts down 40 seconds between his writing somebody's name in the death note and seeing the victim die for somebody unfamiliar with the source material the sound of a clock ticking doesn't inight strong emotion one way or the other but Wild horn delivers a forboding sense with diminished seventh chords from brass and strings remember that two-tone Motif from the anime soundtrack I mentioned earlier the very first words sung in this musical use that Motif the chorus

5:24 chant the word Kira at The Climb Max the strings begin playing a descending chromatic pattern which is reminiscent of the yanme soundtrack too I think particularly for somebody unfamiliar with the source material the Overture works brilliantly from the GetGo there's a feeling of unease and tension and you find yourself asking questions immediately where is the Justice when the guilty all go free whereas the Justice introduces us to Light Yagami it's his I am/ I want song this is a convention in musical theater where early on in the show our protagonist tells the audience who they are/ what

6:10 they want the song takes place in class where light begins debating his teacher about the criminal justice system as the song progresses light rallies his classmates up and they join his declaration what's interesting with this song is that it really makes us empathize with light and see him as this moral figure almost bro is splitting straight facts in this song and it's aged like fine wine since 2014 let's just have a listen to a few of the [Music] lyrics and hold no one accountable when everything goes wrong let the Rich and Famous get away with murder every time a high price mouth he starts a talk his client gets a walk tell me where is a Justice in the Manga and Anime light was kind of a bad guy from the start he

6:56 wasn't particularly likable even before he found the Death Note but I think this approach the musical uses works better arguably when you have the audience on the side of this character at the start they'll spend the rest of the show questioning their feelings their own ideals around Justice their morals making it that more interesting of a psychological experience the song effectively identifies light's beliefs surrounding Justice throughout the anime and manga we see that light has a naive belief that everything is either good or bad and this is summarized in many lyrics in the song Time drain back to seeing black and white and wrong and right again also I love that internal rhyme gorgeous there's so many Easter eggs in these lyrics and nods to

7:42 what's about to come like criticizes judges pushing pencils mostly get it wrong which is an interesting no to the fact that shortly light himself will be a judge literally pushing a pencil into a Death Note there's a line about victims of crime all of them afraid to walk the streets at night which is funny because the same line is actually in the anime but in that context light is talking about criminals who are scared to walk the streets because of Kira that's such a tiny reference but so clever there's so many of these in the show and overall the lyrics really show how much Jack Murphy got to know these characters the attention to detail is fantastic and you can tell Murphy researched the source material really well the song also helps characterize light as this charismatic guy who could convince people easily one of the

8:29 reasons like got as far as he did as kir was because he had this Charisma about him and he proves those Charisma skills by in the course of this one song radicalizing a whole classroom of teenagers the lyrics Express this but the score itself uses clever techniques to amplify it too earli in the song light's classmates are contributing only vocables to the song singing oo and rs underneath the debate between light and his teacher but as light starts to convince them they begin echoing his lyrics and towards the end even start chanting the word justice over and over the song starts with a thin texture of just light accompanied by a piano but by the end he has a whole chorus singing with him guitars drums basses strings it's a good metaphor what's also quite interesting is this is one of the few times unnamed chorus Parts have

9:17 meaningful lines towards the end the students start adding their own contributions about Law And [Music] [Applause] Justice I like this tibit because it shows that many people share lights values and that those views can be valid but it's how you action those views that make you good or bad there's a cool key change at the end of the song up until this point we've been in EF flat minor but we end up modulating to F minor this could have been quite a seamless modulation E flat minor and F minor have a few tones in common but walhorn interestingly chooses phrase modulation a technique without any transitional material linking the two key

10:02 there's this random E major chord which sounds out of place and obviously isn't dionic to E flat minor you could say It's actually an A flat minor cord with a ray is Fifth and the fifth is the roote but what's more likely is that we're not in E flat minor anymore it's an immediate transition to F minor and this chord is actually the seventh degree in that key the next few chords go 751 with that one clearly showing we're now in f I think world horn purposefully chose to do a phrase modulation rather than than a more subtle Choice like a common chord or an inharmonic modulation because it's symbolic for a lot of the show's themes light is a black and white thinker he's either an E flat minor or F minor there's no gray area where he's transitioning from one to the other this song achieves a lot it's great

10:48 characterization for light it sets up the narrative and it begins dropping themes and motifs we're going to see throughout the rest of the show [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and we're on to song two this is sung by ryuk and REM as they're in the Shinigami realm watching down on the human world the instrumentation continues to give us clever metaphors the introduction to this song is played on a music box if you've ever had a music box you'll know it's as simple as twisting the key than sitting back and watching the mechanism work and that's pretty much what ryuk does in Death Note he drops the death note into the human world then sits back and lets everyone else entertain him so another cool metaphor from Frank wildhorn there the lyrics perfectly characterize ryuk

11:34 and REM ryuk sings of humans in a demeaning way and without much purpose Beyond being entertainment to ease his boredom he sings the lyric while we stay eternally bored going through the motions reward while we stay eternally bored there and that made me laugh because usually when someone says they're eternally bored it's hyperbole but for ryuk an immortal he is literally eternally bored as for REM she's more thoughtful she's intrigued by humans especially by love that they can have for one another foreshadowing her falling in love with Misa later on in the show I also really like this line yes but how they fate confusing f with what

12:19 [Music] isely light is convinced that he found the Death Note because of Fate because he is Justice and he is the god of the new world whereas ryuk regularly reminds us it was just chance he just dropped it and it just happened to be found by light nothing more the score is in 68 and the instrumentation is grandiose it almost feels like we're Waltzing at a high-end ball it gives ruk a sense of power and dominance which is particularly relevant as ultimately they are responsible for everything that's about to happen in the human world the song is in a harmonic minor with a few passages in a melodic minor too in western music theory there are three scale patterns for the minor scale the two we hear most often are the melodic

13:05 minor and the harmonic minor an issue many songwriters face when writing Melody with the harmonic minor scale is that the 7th degree is raised by One semmit Tone creating an augmented second between the sixth and 7th [Music] degrees this larger than usual gap between the two tones is often undesirable so when Melody writing many composers instead choose the melodic minor scale [Music] as you can see in addition to the raised seventh the sixth degree of the scale is also raised in the melodic minor scale despite this interestingly much of the melody in this song does actually use the harmonic minor scale and that's purposefully most of our ears are more accustomed to hearing the melodic minor in Melodies so hearing this less

13:51 familiar Melody emphasizes that ryuk and REM are not of our world additionally augmentation in music gives Melodies a mysterious sound that evokes a Feeling of anas in The Listener a good choice for this [Music] song something else I love about the songwriting here is the apuras that start each chorus an apatura is an ornamental note that temporarily displaces and subsequently resolves into a main note they're only human they don't see who they are is always the first bar of the chorus is accompanied by the tonic chord an A

14:38 minor chord however the first pitch sung by ryuken REM is a G sharp which is not part of an A minor chord however the melody quickly resolves up to an a satisfyingly these apoia churas make all the difference in setting the mood for both this song and these characters let me show you what the chorus would sound like without the apoia churas [Music] overall this is a really fun song and a great introduction to the shinig garies the highest rain the coldest winds are waiting for theane Hurricane takes place right after light has written his first name in the death note and has seen his victim die the

15:23 beginning of the song sounds Melancholy as to symbolize light's initial hesitance towards the Death Note did I hear correct did it was it simp byri down name indirectly [Music] in but as the song goes on light sees the Death Note as an opportunity to achieve his goals and the texture becomes more triumphant with him the second verse begins with which calls back to the opening song of the musical where like questions where is the Justice and is there any justice and now he's found the answer he is the Justice what's very cool with the lyrics here is the first time the chorus

16:09 plays light [Music] sings Wind hurrian and then the second time it comes around he [Music] [Applause] sings hurrian in the first chorus he's removing him himself and what he has done with the Death Note but then after some self-reflection he takes ownership of his actions I am the hurricane the hurricane itself is great imagery for Kira like a hurricane Kira is an unpredictable and powerful force capable of taking countless lives effortlessly in the bridge of the song we hear Light sing those Infamous words for the first

16:55 time I am brave World differently to the manga in anime light says he's the god of a Brave New World which is likely a reference to huxley's famous dystopian LEL Brave New World which centers around a supposed perfect world where all pain and sadness has been eradicated by social engineering a parallel could be drawn between lights Brave New World and hux these where the world is made perfect by questionable means up until now we haven't seen light's narcissism we know he has a strong sense of right and wrong but we haven't seen that arrogance and that complex that he is the answer to fixing Justice up until now many of light's lyrics are asking questions why is this allowed to happen what causes this and even at the start of this song Light is asking did this really happen but this song is where he

17:43 stops asking questions because he is now God and would have God even have questions looking at the score for a moment there's some cool subtleties at the start of the song we hear this little piano riff played monophonically when it comes back for the second verse after light has accepted the power of the death note it is played in two octaves symbolizing it's not just light anymore but it's light and Kira the Riff is also quite similar to L's piano Motif we hear regularly in the musical so I wonder if that's a little bit of foreshadowing I also like the word painting in the chorus the word hurricane alone spreads across nearly an octave symbolizing the great reach a hurricane can have I will bring power of

18:30 the Hur I don't think I've mentioned yet the singers themselves on this demo light is played brilliantly by Jeremy Jordan whose voice you might recognize from various Broadway shows as Varian in the Tangled series or that viral video of him singing Selen Deon It's All Coming Back to Me Now his vocals especially at the climax of this song are so spectacular the taturo in this song is huge too it's nearly two octaves some really impressive singing from Jeremy Jordan here hey except for [Music] K moving forward at this stage in the show ruk has presented himself to light and light has shared his plans some people think this song sounds like Poor Unfortunate Souls from The Little

19:15 Mermaid and it definitely does have Disney villain Vibes but if we're going to relate it to Disney to me it's kind of a same but different version of friend like me from Aladdin both are about a supernatural power introducing themselves to and sharing their power with the protagonist throughout the song ryuk is almost teasing light singing of Kira sarcastically and suggesting it isn't a big deal and that it's amusing to him that people are taking such an interest he even says that his dropping the notebook is quote of no consequence and that light's self-aggrandizing assumption that he was chosen to use the Death Note is comical I think part of this is also ryuk provoking light ruk is Bored he wants entertainment he wants light to keep using the death note and

20:00 keep providing ing him with fun in the chorus vuk refers to light as playing a game this is a phrase that regularly returns throughout the show the mass is cheering K don't know he's late to coming playing his dangerous game from ryuk's perspective this is a game to him he doesn't see any value in human life he treats humans like toys to play a game with I love this line you think you're making changes but the only thing you can change is your name ryuk is Immortal he has seen all the tragedies of humankind across thousands of years he knows history repeats itself and in the end nothing truly changes he knows in the long run the only light

20:48 will have changed is his name at the end of the song ruk gets distracted by an apple and starts singing about that instead k k who makes a list of people whose names are right down and oh look now there's an apple mind if I just take a bite which is funny on its own but it also really hammers in how trivial ryuk finds all of Kira's Antics unfortunately there isn't a score available for this song so I can't go into detail about the content but there's a few things I can take away just from hearing the audio the instrumentation is very orchestral we can hear strings woodwind percussion and Brass this contrasts with the songs sung by human characters which tend to be guitars pianos and drums I think this

21:34 is purposeful and relates to the idea of high ART versus low art music classical orchestral music like that that accompanies the shinigamis is considered high art whereas pop and rock music like that that accompanies the humans is considered low art this parallels the fact that the shinigamis are more powerful than the humans the piece sounds grandiose if there were no vocals attached I would assume the instrumental was for a piece of op earlier I mentioned the comparison many people have drawn between this song and Poor Unfortunate Souls whilst the chord progressions aren't identical there's a lot of similarities both songs regularly use seven chords and sus four chords for example what's interesting is dissonant notes are treated differently to how we've heard them previously in the

22:20 musical previously dissonance has been unprepared but in the case of this song Those sus four chords are suspensions so there's preparation in the tones prior the sus cord CS still have tension but they feel slightly more purposeful and placed than previous examples many of ryuk's songs have this almost circus music feel potentially a suggestion that ryuk behaves like a ring Master as he ultimately does lead this circus of a story and enter Misa ammane I love that differently to the source material in the musical they make Misa this pop Idol who sends messages to Kira through her songs so for this song Misa has not yet

23:07 received her death note but Kira has brought to Justice the man who killed her parents and this song is basically a love song to Kira thanking him for that after the slow introduction the song is this ' 80s inspired pop track it feels out of place with the rest of the songs but I think that was intentional in musicals generally the idea is that we're in this alternative Universe where singing to the characters is as natural as thinking or speaking but for this song the character is a singer literally performing a song so to emphasize that separation I think world horn purposefully made the score disjunct from all the other songs again sadly a score isn't available for this song but I can pick out a few things Harmony wise I'm pretty sure the accompaniment uses

23:52 the questionably titled sensitive female cord progression the progression was titled this after it was used regularly by quote sensitive female singers of the early 2000s who wrote emotionally driven songs because it's a chord progression so identifiable with female pop stars it makes sense that it was chosen for our character who herself is a female pop star they too young and they call fo [Music] who the song has a bit of a gospel feel about it too especially with the background singers Death Note is known for its religious

24:37 symmetry so it makes sense to see a bit of that in the musical too and because Misa worships Kira it was a good choice to add it to this song We All Need a Hero to help us to be oh this song is so freaking sad and not because it's a sad song but because of the cont text so just before this song SAU Yagami is speaking with her brother light about Kira light asks her what she would say to Kira if she met him and saou says she would tell him to stop and that he should follow in her brother's example obviously not knowing her brother is in fact Kira the song is all about light

25:23 being sa's hero which is so bitter sweet in the Japanese production Mis actually joins in at the end of this song and her hero is also light but in the opposite way to suou which is quite poetic actually I don't have too much to say about this song it's your typical musical theater ballad I will mention it's the first of many light puns in this [Music] musical don't worry though the V light pun Is Yet To Come the game Begins the same way I look for PS on screen here is where we finally meet L I mentioned in the introduction to this video that the anime soundtrack utilizes character

26:10 motifs and themes in the music and this extends to the musical L has a little piano Motif we hear regularly and it's not too different to the one in the [Music] anime and that's how the song begins I mentioned during Hurricane that L's piano riff is quite similar to lights in fact it's actually close to being a copy of Lights riff just backwards which is a great way to symbolize that these characters are so similar but also so different and potentially it's also a nod to L's idea of working backwards although that might be a bit of a reach I like that in the musical there's kind of a parallel between L and ryuk ryuk approaches this whole Kira situation as

26:56 a game and L kind of does as well I mean it's in the title of the song and I like that the musical doesn't present L as 100% a good guy cuz whilst he's certainly a better Human Than Light he still has questionable moments he treats the investigation like an exciting puzzle to finish his investigative career is more so because he enjoys solving things rather than enjoys bringing bad people to Justice although that does play a smaller part in it and I love that the musical doesn't portray l or light as 100% hero or 100% villain that's hard to achieve to our musical but they manage it anyway back to the song itself like quite a few songs in the musical it gives us something we didn't see in the source material so the song is an internal monologue from L

27:43 he's just witnessed Kira's first mistake killing L standing on TV and he's reflecting how he's got to this stage throughout the first two verses there's a sense of calm almost a gentle piano playing broken chords accompan L whilst he outlines his investigative methods your kind of any theories till all the facts are in start at the end of all your queries to learn where things begin and the texture begins to build when El announces that he's ready to begin the game as usual there's some brilliant creative writing in here I particularly like the line anal by backwards [Music] effects El states that he works

28:28 backwards followed up by saying effects reveal their cause I.E the psychological phenomena cause and effect not only is this great lyric writing it also is true to what El does in the story he can't determine the cause of these criminals deaths but he can investigate the effect to hopefully deduce the cause there's a lot of lyrics referring to data and maths and that's another reoccurring theme in the musical the calculus solution L is symbolized by numbers and data whereas light is Sy symbolized by nature such as the hurricane looking at the score itself the chorus actually has the same chord progression as light's opening song where is the Justice let me show [Music] you PS on screen connecting bits of data

29:23 until I find out what they mean I wonder if the use of this progression is a subtle answer to that original question where is the justice indicating L is the Justice there are lines that can't be crossed there are things you shouldn't do this song is an insight into the morals of sirro Yagami especially how they contrast with his sun lights lyrically Siro uses a number of sayings and Proverbs about Justice For example youy means in this song makes it clear that for Ichiro the end doesn't justify the means yet we know for light it's the opposite this is another way the musical questions if L is entirely heroic in addition to schooling his son about

30:08 right and wrong SRO is also criticizing L's methods in the song L has just indirectly killed lindel Taylor in the interest of catching Kira which Soo vly disagrees with you don't K as [Music] aute gun close your eyes and shoot in the next verse light agrees with his father in an attempt to manipulate him into bringing light into the task force as the final chorus comes in light Echoes to each Row's lines a few beats behind in an attempt to show his father he agrees with him [Music] don't I think it's poetic how World horn

30:53 chooses to have like Echo his father's lines rather than sing them in unison with him the whole song is about not Crossing these lines well light just crossed his father's vocal line is that a reach looking at the score many of the previous songs have a syn pained beat in the accompanying instruments but the instruments in this song are playing straight with little decoration in between the four beats of each bar I think this is really representative of SRO he's straight to the point and if we really want to push the point he's so strict about lines that even the instruments can't go outside of the lines of each beat of the the song yeah that is definitely reaching when light sings his verse there's a clear contrast the piano accompanying him plays syn pated chords

31:40 and the bass drum has unstructured hits another interesting point is that so Ichiro's verses are in D Major whereas lights are in the parallel minor which is clever because the LCS themselves are quite positive about valuing lessons light's father has given him but because it's in a minor key there's that unease and confirmation that likes being dishonest in this verse the truth is hard to sort out among the secrets and the lies and here is our first light and L duet you might recognize the Melody from the game begins L's earlier solo but there's some subtle and some not so subtle changes at the beginning we hear that same piano Motif but the difference this time is it's joined by a guitar playing an inverted version of that Motif as we mentioned earlier throughout

32:28 the show L is represented by a piano and by a guitar so as they move in on one another it's cool to see their motifs intermingle the chorus hits with L and suo singing in unison contrasting with the previous song where SRO did not sing in unison with light I think this emphasizes that whilst Ellen and SRO don't see it your eye on everything they have enough shared values and goals to be able to share a Melody the next chorus is shared between L and light is quickly bluring between what's right and what is right this is a great reference back to their aligns ell is reflecting on having lindal Taylor killed and light's reflecting on killing not just criminals but also people who get in the way both of them are questioning their own ideals of Justice I think it's smart how in

33:14 El's choros with Sweeto they sing in unison but with light they sing in harmony because they have a lot in common but also a lot not so their rhythm is the same but their pitch isn't when light and L sing in harmony in their Duets L always has the upper Harmony the characters have a similar vocal range in the musical so theoretically either could take the high Harmony but I think L always having it is a subtle nod to the fact that he has the moral High Ground after this light and L singing Counterpoint taking lyrics from their earlier verses this is a musical theater convention probably the most familiar example would be the confrontation in Lay [Music] Miz Counterpoint is such a good technique for confrontation narratives

34:01 and it works beautifully here that is act one finished if you've been enjoying the video so far please give it a like And subscribe now before we move on to act two I do need to tell you that unfortunately a few songs in this act don't have a recording um or at least it hasn't been put online so the first song I'm going to talk about is actually the second song in this act there is a repre of where is the Justice just before this but I can't find it anywhere with that out the way let's discuss love is foral and this song takes place after REM has explained to Misa the sacrific jealous May to save her life as an immortal Ram has seen love result in disaster time and time again most recently with jealous' love for Misa and this song is both a warning to Misa about her

34:46 pursuing Kira romantically as well as rem's own conflicted feelings about her growing love for Misa whilst the script was made for English language W horn and Murphy regularly make reference to its Japanese origins in this song Murphy's lyrics reference a Japanese proverb the frog in a wh like a frog in a [Music] well the proverb basically refers to somebody who is intellectually complacent and thinks they know everything there is to know in the mango in anime rem's feelings towards Misa are more ambiguous you could view them as romantic or simply platonic but I love that the musical abandons all subtleties and REM is just gay as hell for me

35:32 [Music] Mortals and fools cleverly contrast with the song that was in the same space in act one they're only human a few subtle nods to the song include the semitonal melody at the start of the verses in both songs it might be a bit of a reach but I interpret this melody where the pitches are really close together almost like the character is uncertain but once they start spreading the pitches out higher and lower they're becoming more confident of their statement instrumentally this song introduces a new instrument I believe it's either a sakauchi or at least a western flu intended to sound like [Music] one the sakauchi is a bamb flu and is a traditional instrument dating back as

36:18 early as 7th Century Japan when I first heard that introduction it sounded pentatonic or mural to me and I quickly worked out it uses the notes of the aolan mode but then I had to thinking there are Japanese scales out there I wonder if this was actually inspired by one of those so after a bit of digging I found the hosi scale and lo and behold it consists of the tones used in this flute music sadly I never studied nonwestern scales so I'm not going to pretend I know everything or anything for that matter about them but why did Wild horn choose to introduce these cool backs to Japan I think part of it is reminding us that REM is an immortal who has been around for forever time has experienced so differently to her that these scales and instruments she heard centuries ago for the first time probably feel like last week to

37:04 [Music] her just okay A bit of context for this song this is when ell and light first meet and L Reveals His identity to light so this song is light trying to produce if this guy really is L and if so why is he telling him this and for L he's trying to deduce if this guy is Kira obviously the whole song is a stalemate light has just solved the problem of hidden surveillance only to be met with an even bigger problem which is L he thought he was winning but now he's been completely thrown off his game anyway the instrumentation is really cool L's verse is accompanied by piano and light's verse is accompanied by guitar true to that ongoing theme each time I challenge he

37:50 responds he takes the bait as if he's taunting me I wonder is this guy for real I wonder is he who he claims to be there are some interesting modulations in this song it starts in E Minor then halfway through the verse the melody leads us chromatically into this tery modulation up to G minor it's a nice choice because it's more noticeable than the likes of a circle of fifths modulation and it's a good way to indicate the characters instability he waves magic ws and mene I haven't figured out just how he doesn't kill them with a knife or gun the end of the verse modulates back down to E minor helped out by this secondary dominant and then there's this Cadence

38:36 which at first sounds like a deceptive Cadence because it begins with a dominant chord and then moves to the submedian but then unexpectedly another dominant chord is added which in context is brilliant because L has just said I haven't figured out just yet oh but I'm pretty sure it's your son he is being deceptive and he's showing that by deceiving the deceptive Cadence [Music] your son leading into the choruses there's more clever storytelling using modulation the end of the verse modulates back down to E minor and the first chord of the chorus hits and it's an E minor chord are ye the tonic but

39:23 wait this chorus is in G major that E minor chord was not actually the tonic but another little bit of deception like it or not I [Music] am let's to it and I love that B7 at the end because it's a great example of chord borrowing with a narrative purpose so B7 is not dionic meaning it's not part of the scale in the prevailing key which is G major it has this dsharp which does not feature in the scale if the progression was dionic it would instead be a B minor chord let me show you the difference

40:10 [Music] doesn't hit the same does it but how did that B7 come to be here and why was it used the B7 is borrowed from our relative minor E minor it also results in this awesome chromatic Baseline where the root notes go D dsh E I love this push and pull it creates between G major and E minor the deceptiveness of tonality is narratively perfect for this song towards the climax of this song There's a clever reference back to 's First solo the game begins where he talks about working backwards effect and cause light sings the line win or lose and L follows up by saying the phrase backwards lose or [Music] win I'd say this is probably my favorite

40:56 song in the musical musically it's awesome to listen to and it's just the epitome of what this story is [Music] about this is a beautiful love song sung by Misa it's a song she writes and releases in her capacity as a pop Idol it's both a love letter to Kira but it also has hidden messages in it the lyric writing is so great because if you just listen to the song not knowing it's from Death Note it reads as your typical love ballad but practically every every lyric is a note to [Music]

41:44 Kira out of context it sounds like the singer's lover has saved her from sorrow and she wants to devote the rest of her life to him but we know it means Kira you rescued me from the grief of my parents' deaths and I'm willing to give up half of my years to make the Shinigami ideal and help help you this is another cool line [Music] I'll this is a hint to Kira that she has a Death Note knows the method of killing and has the Shinigami eyes a line in the chorus that on reflection is really quite sad is it's different from a usual character pining for another usually they desperately want their love to

42:29 reciprocate their feelings but for me sir she'd love for Kira to love her back but it's not the be all or end all the most important thing for her is that she can help Kira and repay him there's a lovely key change at the climax of this piece from G major to a flat major it's a chromatic modulation yet it feels like a greater lift than that it's very well written in the original key of G major Misa sings the pickup that she sung before every other chorus I'll but in instead of falling to a B for the rest of the phrase like all other choruses Misa stays on the c as a pivot note into the new key this song is such a lovely musical theater ballad and would also be a great

43:15 audition song for any Meto out there hound and bound by hesty this song is SRO questioning his faith in his son and his own values honor is a great theme for serro Yagami at the heart of his character is a man who struggles between his duty to his family and his duty to Justice as a police officer in this song He questions if his honor towards his family or towards Justice is more important traditional Japanese instruments really match his character in that he sticks to the traditions of justice and honor I wish there was Sheep music available for this song because there's so many things I want to check out I'm wondering if the melody is based around one of those Japanese scales but my ear is just not good enough to be 100% certain the song has some of the best lyric writing in

44:00 the whole show so many gorgeous metaphors and double meanings the singer Michael Lanning brings out these lines so well I love the way his tber changes when he's singing of Kira then when he's singing of light I love this line in particular the way he swap so seamlessly from harsh to soft listen to me am I crazy thinking he could be some insane unfeeling monster somehow raised by me the guilt and anguish so icho feels is expressed so well in the musical Murphy has this ability to make us empathize so hard in a short space of time timelines and coincidences can't replace hard

44:48 facts but if what I'm see bends as light refes GH I need a moment that is my single favorite line line in the musical and I can't believe it's a light pun the double meaning is beautiful we're familiar with the process of light bending during refraction but the line also means if what I'm seeing I.E these Kira murders correlate with light I.E the person damn Murphy deserves a Tony just for this line SRO is on a bound to bring Kira to justice but also Bound by the honesty that means admitting his son could be Kira bound and bound by [Music]

45:37 honesty honor bound to Ser his at the end of the song he changes the refrain from HonorBound and bound by honesty to HonorBound to serve his family because he decides to put his family above his morals and choose to believe that light isn't Kira because he can't accept any other reality name as the me who is playing his game this is just so rock and roll it could be a great hit for a rock band during this song whilst playing a game of tennis ell and light are trying to get inside each other's minds and work out each other's game plan with that tennis match making that metaphor very literal in previous Ellen light Duets the instrumentation changes based on who is

46:23 singing but for this duet it's the same for both of them throughout which makes sense cuz the whole song is them trying to think and act like one another this song is a lesson in building anticipation musically every musical element plays a part in building tension and it is so good from the very start of this song up until the first chorus the guitar plays this repeated deav over and over the repetition builds anticipation throughout the verse and we get such a satisfying resolution when the chorus hits and we get these chunk chords can you describe a chord as chunky screw it they're chunky there's barely any chords in this

47:12 chorus that aren't decorated there's this lovely D Minor ad 2 F major 7s G minor 6's and they all work together so seamlessly once we approached the chorus for the last time after the bridge we now come to expect that full texture but World Hong cleverly makes an adaptation and delays that satisfying chorus hit which makes the resolution that much more satisfying for a brief moment that texture that has been building up throughout the bridge disappears giving us no accompaniment whatsoever then as soon as we notice it the texture returns at full force then he will un you his and under his said this technique is actually used a few times in the anime here's an

47:58 example for it's such a clever technique because each time it's used we know we're about to hear a musical or narrative climax but that delay gives us that element of surprise and excitement the ending of this is so powerful ell and light are singing The Familiar chorus but this time it has an extra three bars added before the final Cadence to build anticipation firstly we have these gorgeous seven chords leading in and then whilst the accompaniment is playing an A7 El clashes with the instruments

48:44 beautifully by singing a B flat that B flat is not dionic so the crunch it causes is [Music] awesome as Ellen lights in the final line the accompaniment comes back in with power chords playing just the root and dominant of each [Applause] [Music] [Applause] chord as the name might suggest power cords elicit a powerful feeling but they're also great here because they don't indicate either major or minor therefore there's a more ambiguous feel at the end comparatively if Wild horn had used the third degrees of these chords and made it clearly a D Minor ending it it wouldn't have that same

49:30 effect let me show you the [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] difference I'm already gone cuz I'm living on yeah the religious imagery is not subtle in the slightest for this song this is where Misa has been arrested on suspicion of being the second ker the song is her telling the interrogators that no matter what they say or do to her she will not betray Kira and reveal his Secrets much of the melody in this song is reminiscent of light's first solo back in Act One

50:15 hurricane so me up [Music] and you never change my the hardest rains the coldest winds waiting for the hurricane it really shows that up until The Bitter End Misa admired light and would do anything for him you can also hear coolback L's verse solo too the game begins between the verses you can hear that Melody perhaps indicating a Time skip between each verse where L is interrogating Misa borrow time is such a clever phrase to use Misa literally lives on borrowed time as she was supposed to die when her stalk attacked her but the Shinigami jealous saved her giving his remaining

51:03 time to Misa she's borrowing his time this song is so sad because whilst on one hand Misa is singing optimistically about her Devotion to Kira there's a sense that she knows that they have lost and that she's resigning herself to [Music] death musically the song stays in B minor throughout most other songs in the show have key changes but the fact that this song stays in the same key throughout symbolizes misa's unwavering devotion other elements in the song stay the same throughout too the verses and choruses use the same respective chord progressions on each repetition and the tempo stays constant towards the end of the song the texture is stripped down leaving us with just Misa singing accompanied by a

51:52 [Music] guitar we are very familiar at this stage in the musical that light is symbolized by a guitar so that's a bit of sweet [Music] touch G why is Acts 2 sad song after sad song at this point REM has realized the only way to save is to erase her memories of the death note and kill L but by killing L REM would be extending misa's life an action that is forbidden for Shinigami and that would result in rem's own death throughout the show we see rem's understanding of Love change in her first song there only human she's intrigued by this thing humans have which is love but is also cynical about it by her second song Mortals and fools REM is warning Misa of the dangers of

52:38 Love whilst at the same time still not understanding it completely but in this song she finally realizes what love is because she's experiencing it herself there's lots of lovely double meanings in these lyrics it can take your breath that's what love can literally take someone's breath away the way your heartbeat quickens and a breath gets caught in your throat but in rem's case love could literally take her breath away because to fall in love with a human results in death for a Shinigami although REM knows she's about to die there's no sense of fear in the word she [Music]

53:24 delivers even if I will very sad there is no score available online for this song so you'll have to put up with my questionable transcription here but here's a few interesting notes from the score the verse uses the most common chord progression in Western pop music 1 5 6 4 so many famous love songs use this chord progression to name a few I'm yours I Need Your Love rewrite the Stars We Found Love You make me feel like a natural woman I could go on so it makes sense that world horn shows a chord progression for this love song that is so conventional in pop music at the start of this chorus Ram sings of love taking you by surprise Wild horn beautifully decorates this by having Ram Singh and a podura at the start of the chorus that unprepared dissonance takes

54:10 us by surprise and is resolved upwards [Music] beautifully that's not the only bit of dissonance in this chorus though there's a lovely suspension in the next bar where the G from that G major chord is held into the next chord of D making it a sus for cord REM draws such an interesting parallel to light and L in the musical those two humans are so focused on their ground ideals of power and Justice that they lose their humanity and don't feel any love or even mention it but then they're contrasted by this ancient god of death who learns to love and becomes more human than the two actual human main characters throughout the show REM sings of love as a human only trait but in the end she's the only character in the show who has

54:56 true love for another the song ends with one final beautiful double [Music] meaning to surrender to love is a saying yet in Ram's case love is her surrendering literally [Music] everything see we're coming towards the end of the musical and I know what you're thinking at this point in the narrative we're only about 2/3 of the way through the anime how is the musical ending already well they had to adapt the ending to fit into a two act musical let me explain how the plot diverts following light's directions REM

55:43 writes down L's name in her death note including directions to manipulate his actions prior to his death to make it look like L was Kira it's specified the L will meet light in an abandoned warehouse where he will hold light at gunpoint shooting him to only cause superficial damage before turning the gun on himself light's plan is he can return to the task force and explain that L tried to kill him as evidenced by the gunshot wound before El confessed to being Kira and shot himself right got it now we can get into the song Tear clock though it feels right a part of me knows that it's wrong as if

56:29 another's will had moved me like in the anime El knows he's about to die in these first few lines he indicates that he's aware that his actions are being controlled by some unknown power and he is working on autopilot this is also expressed through the music itself the melody El sings in the verse simply copies the fifth of whichever Triad is accompanying him almost like he doesn't have the brain capacity to create his own Melody anymore and he's on autopilot just singing along to the chords the verse uses a repetitious chord progression there's a nice bit of word painting in the lyrics where L describes being in a constant Loop whilst the chord progression Underneath Him performs a constant Loop I'm like a software CAU inside an endless loop just bad code thatsa the chords in this progression

57:18 are 1 5 6 7 Shar five that final chord is interesting the seventh chord in B major consists of an a sharp C Shar and E however here that e is raised a semitone up to an F that F natural gives the chord A lydian feel in the lydian mode the fourth degree of the scale is raised by semmit Tone and in B major that would be the E raised to an F the sharpen forth in lydian gives music a mystical or haunting quality and is used notably in many Supernatural and other worldly Works my favorite example is the theme from ET [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is not the only time there are hints of lydian in this song in the chorus L's Melody includes a raised forth have a

58:05 listen this ends as a comparison let me show you how it would sound without the raised [Music] forth the accompaniment also has hints of lydian in the chorus the final chord of the progression is a C major chord which is not dionic to be major it's technically a secondary dominant but that F natural in the c major chord in the context of B major is still a raised forth and gives that mystical lydian feeling after L's verse and chorus light has his own followed by a bridge and final chorus sung between the pair light

58:51 sings his own very clear lydian phrase [Music] don't I'm going to it this song kind of disappointed me this is the climax of the whole Musical and I expected something more exciting and dramatic when I started transcribing the score and noticed those little Easter eggs like the lydian touches and L copying the chords I start to like the song a lot more but those aren't things you would pick up simply watching the musical for the first time and for a piece that's supposed to be so climactic I think it's time to throw subtleties out the window but considering we're an hour into this analysis and this is my first critique I don't think it's a huge issue in the ground scheme of things

59:37 [Music] windan so this song wasn't actually recorded or at least wasn't released in English but I need to include it for narrative purposes light's plan has gone as he hoped the power of the Death Note has caused L to kill himself light believing he is one begins to celebrate but ryuk laments that life will return to a boring routine without how El's challenge light and writes light's name in The Death Note killing him too vuk observes the two dead bodies and departs the human world remarking that they entertained him for a brief period but both their lives were ultimately

1:00:22 [Music] meaningless this is the final song in the musical and is sung just by The Ensemble with no named characters which is poignant as of itself arqum is also known as a Mass for the dead and it's performed most regularly within the Catholic church this is yet another good call back to death note's religious imagery this song isn't defined as a recream for Kira a requim for l or even a requim for Kira's victims it's simply a requim whose lyrics could be equated to any human death doesn't discriminate between the Sinners and the Saints and All Humans who have died in this show are equal in this final song there are so many questions left unanswered but it doesn't matter the lyrics themselves say we don't know who was right or wrong who

1:01:07 was weak or strong but regardless there's nothing left to [Music] learn the point is no one wins the theme throughout the show is that this is a game Ellen lighter competing for who is going to come out Victorious constantly stating that only one of them will win in the end neither of them ever expected that there could be an outcome where everyone loses in addition the whole song is basically symbolizing that nothing has changed there's a line about Breeze blowing through trees that juxtaposes with the hurricane metaphor light describes himself as throughout the show in light's entric view his

1:01:53 impact was a hurricane ripping through the trees but the Ensemble refer to it as a simple [Music] Breeze light and L lose their Humanity in the course of this story only in death does it return looking at the music for this song There is some beautiful writing as the title may suggest it's heavily inspired by requ and mass music one of my favorite Parts is here up until now the chorus has been singing in four-part harmony but they sing in octaves for a bar and then lead into this gorgeous frian [Music]

1:02:40 Cadence the fian Cadence is characteristic of barck music and can give music an archaic sound which works great here because the whole purpose of the song is to say that the world operates on a loop and at our core we are the same humans that lived centuries past there's also this descending Baseline in the next bar that is just so satisfying to the [Music] air the song ends in style with yet another deep [Music] lyric there's two meanings here firstly the word goodbye is very old so it's suggesting this story as one that has

1:03:26 long existed but the word goodbye actually originated as a contraction of the phrase God be with you ending the show on one final religious reference and so ends this Beast of a video no I had so much fun making this and it just made me fall in love with this musical even more I really hope one day some big boss on Broadway will revisit this musical and give it the chance it deserves we are blessed to have this album but I feel Broadway really missed out on something so special with this but never say never keep raving about it on the internet and who knows maybe someday someone with power will take notice but thank you so much for watching this was a really long video so I appreciate you taking the time to do so if you'd like to see more videos please subscribe and let me know in the comments what you want to see

1:04:13 next see you soon