Lin-Manuel Miranda partners with the Decemberists for 'Hamilton' song about Ben Franklin
Ben Franklin gets the "Hamilton"treatment.
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As promised this week, Lin-Manuel Miranda will release new content from his hit musical Hamilton monthly through 2018 in a series dubbed "The Hamildrops." He began Friday with the release of a track in collaboration with the Decemberists about everyone's favorite Philadelphian: Benjamin Franklin.
"Ben Franklin's Song" features foul-mouthed lyrics that Miranda wrote for the musical but ended up not using. On their website, the Decemberists, of Portland, Ore, indicated that Miranda wanted to include Franklin as a character in the show and imagined his songs sounding something like the band's music.
"We hope you like it. It was a lot of fun to write and record," the band wrote. "If you're a Hamilton fan, we hope it will add a new dimension to the world of the show for you — but you can also just enjoy it as a history lesson. Franklin invented bifocals, you know. And the glass harmonica. What a … guy."
The track got the attention of the Franklin Institute, which broke down the claims in the song into ones that are correct, probably correct, and incorrect. Miranda, it seems, did pretty good, with just one claim — that Franklin swore a lot — ending up in the "decidedly incorrect" category, according to the institute.
The Hamildrops will featured new, as-yet-unspecified "content" from Hamilton monthly in 2018, a follow-up to The Hamilton Mixtape released last December. That album contained a collection of covers of Hamilton tracks by Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson, Nas, the Roots, and others.
Listen to the track at your discretion here: